Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!lll-winken!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Iconitis
Message-ID: <1402@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 8 Apr 89 22:11:44 GMT
References: <1930@dataio.Data-IO.COM> <988@starfish.Convergent.COM>
Reply-To: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Followup-To: comp.editors
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 17

>The obvious upside of icons is that they make the computer just as usable
>no matter what country the machine is used in ...

Not necessarily.  Consider, for example, an icon for a mail-reading
program, in the form of a US-style mailbox.  If used in some country
where the US-style mailboxes, with the little flag on the side, aren't
used, it won't necessarily mean anything.  I think the Sun386i uses a
different icon for "mailtool", for precisely this reason; unfortunately,
at least at one point they used a postage stamp.  This may well have
been equally understandable in all countries - but then, 0 == 0; it
looked more like a picture to me than a postage stamp, and furthermore a
postage stamp doesn't directly remind me of an inbox or an outbox, so
the association with "mailtool" was rather indirect anyway....

The bottom line is that there is *no* guarantee that, merely by using an
icon, people of all nations - or even people of *your* nation - will
automatically know to what the icon refers.