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List:       kde-look
Subject:    Re: Icon improvements.
From:       Torsten Rahn <torsten () kde ! org>
Date:       2001-03-08 14:36:04
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On Thursday 08 March 2001 15:06, Sean Pecor wrote:
> On Thursday 08 March 2001 01:24, Sergej Malinovski wrote:
> > Ask yourself the question: Why would I chage something that works (if it
> > does)?
>
> I'm motivated by my perspective. I don't think the cut, copy and paste
> icons as a whole are intuitive. But I understand the motivation to follow

They might not be intuitive for newbies but they have become  
standard-symbols you'll find in almost every GUI. Is the symbol that is used
to switch your tv off intuitive? Is the symbol for ejecting Media intuitve? 
Are all the symbols you find on the little tag in your clothes clear and 
intuitive? Certainly not. But there are symbols which are so widely used 
that billions of people know what they are about. It's the same for Cut, copy 
and paste:
You'll find these or very similar symbols on nearly every desktop. Changing 
it to something that is more depictive but non-standard will 
probably only irritate users who know the standard-symbols and will rather 
alienate new-bies. Unless there are extremely good metaphors 
for copy, paste and cut which are 100% intuitive, easy to scale and which 
will convince everybody so much that it is predictable that all other 
existing GUIs will take the same symbols in the longterm, too (because they 
are so great), we won't change the existing standard-symbols.

Greetings,
Tackat

  

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