Re: Icon Love (long-ish)

[Tuomas Kuosmanen <tigert ximian com>]

On Tue, 2002-01-22 at 17:08, Calum Benson wrote:
>    - icons that need people in them.  Human figures are always tricky.
> How do you differentiate reply from reply to all?
>     
I think Outlook uses both white and non-white people on their "reply to all" icon, I wonder if it is just a matter of clarity or also political correctness?
> I have encountered situations where people from other countries felt
> they were getting a "second class" product because it didn't have the
> same icons as the US version.  And if you have people moving from one
> version to another, having to learn new icons is an added burden for
> them.
>     
This is what I wondered too.
> Personally, I think the N, I, S problem is a compelling one.  I would be
> curious why my bold icon was a N if the situation was reversed (or
> perhaps feel like a second class user if I understood why).  So this
> might be a good case for making a localized icon (a pretty easy one to
> draw at that).  On the other hand, the designer should think first about
> whether there are other solutions to reduce the number of variations
> needed, if not get down to one.  For example, what if the icons were a
> few greeked-out letters, which were bold, italic, and underlined
> respectively, at least for places where the standard B, I, 
> and U don't work?
>     
Yea. Although a single letter gives a lot more pixels to play with. But I am starting to lean towards A - A - A by now, it works for everyone who uses a roman alphabet. I wish these things were simple, but all these fine localization plans come to the same point: someone needs to draw / design the localized icons. And it is time consuming and hard. And if a lot of different people do them, the style goes nuts. It took a lot of effort from me and Jakub to sync our icon styles so that the stock icons can be as consistent as they are.
> What is ironic about the previous example is that the word TAXI would've
> worked perfectly in both "languages". Further, it is just about the only
> word that works in all languages (that I can think of), at least those
> using the western alphabet. So it might be just about the only text you
> could think of putting on an icon/button. I'm sure someone will find a
> language that doesn't call it a taxi, but I would also guess that
> business travelers using the application know what the letters/symbols
> t-a-x-i are referring to.
>     
Yea. It is "TAKSI" in finnish, but everyone understands "TAXI" too. Same word with a different way of writing it. Ultimately it boils down to the fact that everyone got their mind brainwashed with american movies anyway ;^)
> I vote one set of icons for the world.  Tigert gave most of the reasons
> why.
>
> It's funny he mentions the "A->Z" sort icon - I just flagged that on the
> Forte For Java product.  While "A" might be universally understood as
> representing a character glyph (and I emphasize the word "might"), I
> doubt "A->Z" is remotely universal.
>
> Let's face it, it is very difficult to come up with a universal icon
> that people from all over the world can simply look at and understand
> what it represents.  What the icons do is jog the memory.  A tool tip or
> help message initially provides a clue, and once a user has used the
> icon a couple of times, they then associate it with the action.  So,
> maybe a simple graduated down arrow would be sufficient for "ascending
> sort".
>     
That could also work. Well, the letters are there as a clue to indicate it is to sort some data, not to do a gradient or such. But yea, I think the arrow helps those who dont get the A->Z thingy.
> - Usually icons do not and should not have text on them. They ought to
> be a pictorial representation of functionality available in the
> application. Generally with icons the same functionality is also
> accessible through menus elsewhere in the application. Text in icons is
> bad policy for localisable applications as it increases the time and
> expense spent on that localisation.
>     
Yea, it is usually the last resort. It's not that all icons are hard to do. There are just those that Susan Kare (the person who did some icons for Nautilus and MacOS and a lot of other things) calls "braintwisters" - I understand very well. She has done this stuff for 18 years or so. There are some things that are simply darned hard to represent in a small 24x24 pixel grid. Or to understand what the pixel grid then means.
> Looking to the future we should push GNOME to adopt .svg images as the
> standard image format as this is plain XML and has strong l10n/i18n
> features in it. For example text is usually a string in the file. Also
> fonts can be embedded in it if necessary as well as all translations
> into a single file. The .svg renderer selects the translation based on 
> the system settings. Also it looks better on screen.
>     
Yeah. Except that librsvg is sorta limited (it doesnt do gaussian blur, to name the most important missing feature) and, while it is RaphCode(tm) it is still considerably slower than using bitmaps. Now, for toolbar icons this is not that critical since you can also cache them, but it really is a rather serious eye-candy-tax you pay with a fully SVG nautilus theme for example.
> In the case of the 'B' and 'i' type icons I would suggest using a simple
> label with formatting on the button. Easy to l10n then. Yes it mightn't
> look as nice but it works, and it will work now. I'm not sure about the
> idea of providing "icon_de.png"-type images as this will put the onus on
> us to work with the images.
>     
I think I'll stick with A's. It'll make everything easier, and heck, our goal is not to please everyone by tickling their ethnic identity by doing the ultimately customized i18n experience, but to make programs that are understandable. There are more important things to spend our efforts on than to do icons that follow the colors of your country's flag or something. :-)

Tuomas

--

Tuomas Kuosmanen  ::  Art Director  ::  Ximian, Inc.
tigert ximian com  ::  www.ximian.com