[haiku-development] Re: Generic Font and FontBoy icons etc.
- From: Ryan Leavengood <leavengood@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2012 16:59:38 -0400
On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 4:45 PM, John Scipione <jscipione@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> I agree that a moveable type icon would make fonts look like an
> application and not a document, however, how is a piece of paper with
> a letter on it any better, what is the metaphor, how does it allow the
> user to relate the file to a font?
Fonts are used to create documents, and further fonts are a sort of
document file (they store the data of how to draw fonts), so using a
document-like icon isn't a huge stretch.
> A piece of paper with letters on it is the obvious choice I suppose
> but it just isn't very creative, and it isn't very intuitive either.
> If someone can come up with a better metaphor or symbolic construct
> that would make the association between a font and the font file then
> I'd love to hear it.
I'm generally a big proponent of using smart metaphors, but sometimes
there aren't really obvious ones, and sometimes metaphors can be taken
too far (such as the many unusable media players which try too hard to
mimic radios.)
While the obvious choice of a paper with letters on it isn't very
creative, at the end of the day it may be more usable.
Also, most people for most of the time won't have to deal with font
files. So we shouldn't worry too much about their icons.
One slight change I can think of which might help is some sort of
"drawing lines" or bezier curve control lines around the letters to
represent that fonts are essentially drawings of letters.
--
Regards,
Ryan
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