RE: suggestions on toolbar icons

[Drew Adams]

    Man, you start out implying you don't want to start an argument and
    yet fill your message up with this sort of crap.  You clearly don't
    like Gnome -- and I certainly have my own long list of complaints
    about it -- but please save the anti-Gnome rants for some other list.

So I'm a Gnome-hater now? And a Microsoft pusher? Ad hominem ad nauseum.

For the record:

1. I have nothing against Gnome. I have never seen or used Gnome. I had
hardly heard of Gnome before Jan's email; I did not know that Emacs was
using Gnome icons; and I did not know that Gnome had a set of generic icons.

I stated explicitly that aligning Emacs with Gnome was fine, in principle. I
mentioned that I agreed with the idea of using generic icons that can change
appearance automatically - that's very good - I mentioned that I wasn't
aware of that possibility. I pointed out a few places where Gnome icons
_agreed_ with what I was suggesting (versus what is now in Emacs). I (and
Lennart) suggested using some Gnome icons that are not used now, and I
suggested using some of the Gnome icons differently.

2. I do use Windows now in my work, as well as GNU/Linux (remotely - xterm
only). I am not particularly a fan of Microsoft as a company, and I don't
think Microsoft UIs are always great - far from it. I think free software as
a movement is great, and Microsoft as a movement is not. But that does not
mean that everything GNU is the best there is, that there is no room for
improvement, or that inspiration for such improvement cannot come even from
the likes of Microsoft or other devils. It so happens that none of my
suggestions on icons were inspired by Microsoft products (to my knowledge),
but so what if they had been?

It is silly (counter-productive) to circle the wagons each time you think
someone has mentioned something happening outside the cult. "Burn the
heretic!" will eventually leave you with few of the faithful left to burn.

3. I don't even use the toolbar - I just happened to open a recent Emacs and
came across what I felt were not-the-most-helpful icons.


I sent along some ideas for improvement, with no particular expectation that
any one of them might be adopted. In several cases I gave alternative
suggestions - the suggestions were obviously intended as food for thought,
as possible minor improvements.

The response was, essentially: 1) Gnome doesn't allow/provide this, and 2)
where allowed/provided, it conflicts with the legacy Emacs icons. End of
story.