> In Unix, a traditional icon for a command > shell is ... a shell! Unfortunately, it reads as "clam" or "snail" in > other languages. I always thought the literal shell image was corny, but visual puns are easy to use and easy to learn -- as long as you speak the lingo...
> log -- as in "captain's log" -- was a piece of wood (which generally > reads as "firewood"). And in an FPGA design program I used, the icon for > "save" was the image of a pig! Both really funny. I have an even more horrible idea about Captain's "log" which I won't mention here :D I wonder if the pig for save wasn't something like the expression, "it saved my bacon!" > and those polysemic icons should be > redone for each language -- or maybe even for each culture! I fear you are entirely correct. You know, if entire fonts must be created for certain locales, I don't see why icons and images are any less important. > order to sound like a native word. There are people in Spain (with > computer science background) that call bugs "boogs", and if you say > "boog" to them, they always think "fallo", never "bicho". I didn't understand the "bicho" bit, but I got your point. > And then, watch how the images have to change in time: for anybody under > 15, the floppy disk icon for "save" is totally opaque! Yeah, that's totally true. Icons are hard enough to design in English, let alone finding something universal (AND that scales 16x16 to 128x128.) Madness! > Your idea for the icon poll page sounds interesting; something must > really be done about this. Thx. I wonder if it would work? Wasn't there a site "hot or not" out there, where you could rate photos of people? Same thing for icons! > The broken arrow is a great step forward. Could you try a broken > computer? Though maybe that's got too much detail, and won't scale down > well. I like the bomb/explosion simile too. Yeah the arrow came to me suddenly, after your first reply (thanks). You won't believe how hard it was to "break" that cursor! I even cut one out of paper and tore it in a few places :) I don't think a whole computer broken would speak of an app that has 'broken' -- and, as you say, there is scaling. > Keep up the good work! Cool. Here and there, here and there. /d -- ubuntu-art mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-art
