Re: Another Emacs icon

[Lennart Borgman]

Richard M. Stallman wrote:

> I see no sense in an Emacs icon that would say "M-x".
> If it says anything, it should be "Emacs" or an "E".
> A picture of a GNU makes no sense as the icon for Emacs in
> particular.
>  
I believe that whether some special symbol in the icon make sense 
depends on the circumstances. If something is wellknown I think other 
rules should be applied then otherwise. For most of us here on the list 
think that both M-x and the picture of the GNU make sense but for people 
who are not that familiar with GNU or Emacs it might not do that 
immidiately perhaps.

Since it seems to be somewhat difficult to find acceptable icons maybe 
it helps if we think about what kind of icons we want. I see two main types:

1) Informative icons - those showing what the program does
2) Logo style icons - more like a logo for a company

And of course many are a mix of those. Some examples of this are the 
logos for Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice etc. None of these include 
the name in the icons. Instead the icons has a style that should be 
easily recognizable. They all use some kind of symbolic memnonics 
adhering to what the programs do. In the case of OpenOffice they had 
been able to make several different icons with a common style for 
different subprograms, each with a piece of common mnemonics and a bit 
of dividing mnemonics.

In the case of Emacs perhaps the icon should use some mnemonic of this 
kind. It is however not so easy to tell what this should allude to. Some 
people might use Emacs for just creating documents. Other use it as a 
programming IDE. And for those really into it Emacs does a lot of 
things, mail, IRC, etc. Maybe it is a toolkit?

Another way of looking at this is to say that Emacs is different because 
it has history and fame. It is part of the GNU face so to say. Looking 
at it this way it is more a logo style icon we should have - probably 
with some GNU picture. And "M-x" of course has some fame too (IMHO). You 
have to know it to really use Emacs, of course. And M-x also alludes to 
the toolkit view. This way of looking at the icons is reflected in the 
current choice of splash screen.

Saying "Emacs" in the icon might seem to allude to the history and fame 
too. It is just that to me it seems unnecessary. You will not often see 
the icon without some text saying just "Emacs".

Well, you might guess my opinion ;-)  -- but I have tried to give our 
choices some structure here. HTH.