> What I was asking for was a document with the file extension on top > but without the app icon layered in between the document and the > extension. The app icon in between is what I think looks ugly -- e.g. > the Xcode icons don't have an Xcode picture on the icon for .h files > for example. Of course, adding the MacVim icon on the document icon > makes it obvious which program will open when you double-click that > file so maybe it isn't such a bad idea to include it.
The HIG says "document icons should make it obvious which application they are associated with.: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/XHIGIcons/chapter_15_section_4.html#/ /apple_ref/doc/uid/20000967-TPXREF124 : I did a quick survey what other apps do: find /Applications -name '*.icns' -exec ln -s {} \; After going through this temporary folder, these apps use the "sheet of paper with app icon" document icon scheme: Acorn Cha-Ching CSSEdit Cyberduck (only page with icon, no text) Firefox Aquamacs (only page with icon, no text) Camino Gimp Inkscape These don't: XCode * * only for some document icons, though That's an overwhelming vote for including the MacVim icon in the document icons. >>> As for the increased app bundle size: how do other text editors >>> handle >>> file type icons? Do they only use small-ish sized icons? Or do >>> they >>> simply not care about the bloat? >> >> TextMate is pre-Leopard and hence has only 128x128 icons (that's true >> of the app icon, too). Smultron has just one generic document icon, >> it's 512x512. TextEdit (does that count as text editor?) uses >> 128x128. >> XCode uses 128x128 icons for most formats (cpp, c, source code files >> in general, pretty ugly ones) and 512x512 for some other files >> (xcodeproj, some filetypes that I believe are iphone-related). > > Ok. Well, I think it is nice to use specialized icons for the most > common formats (c/cpp/obj-c, java, javascript, html, xml, python, > perl, ruby, vim, ..., etc.) and a generic one for everything else but > we should probably avoid having one icon for every file extension > there is. I have no idea which are the "most common" formats though. > ;-) Here are some numbers (getting those was more complicated than expected, the process gave birth to http://amnoid.de/icns/ makeicns.html :-P). Currently (with the Info.plist patch I sent a few days ago), there are 56 document icons (of which perhaps 5 are obscure enough to warrant removal). Icon Composer creates icns files that have 512, 256, 128, 32, and 16 variants. An icns file containing all those versions is about 120kB. Having those icons for all 56 document types needs about 6.5MB just for document icons – in my eyes that's a bit much (does anyone but Bjorn and me care about MacVim.app size?) The HIG says ( http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/XHIGIcons/chapter_15_section_8.html ) that there should at least be 512 and 128 variants, with 32 and 16 variants recommended (but since we autogenerate those sizes anyway, they won't be much better than what OS X would generated from the 128 variant. Then again, the small sizes probably don't need a lot of space). So we can get rid of the 256x256 version without any argument. Which effect do which icon sizes have on file sizes? Here are some measurements: Icns with 512, 128, 32, 16 (no 256): about 96kB. Icns with 256, 128, 32, 16 (no 512): about 60kB. Icns with only 512, 128: about 92kB Icns with only 128, 32, 16: about 36kB Even with the last setting, that's still over 2MB of document icons, so we do need a generic icon. So, here's a proposed icon distribution: * Hi-Res (512, 128, 32, 16): For the generic document icon and for the document icon for vim files. (2 icons) * Low-Res (128, 32, 16) for: txt, tex, h, c, m, mm, c++, java, html, xml, javascript, perl, python, php, ruby, css, haskell, ps, erlang, lisp, scheme, yaml, plist (23 icons) * Generic icon: fortran, sh, diff, flash, asp, bib, c#, csv, tsv, cgi, dtd, dylan, fscript, ini, io, prop, log, wiki, sql, tcl, vcard, vbasic, ics, jsp, log, xsl (26 filetypes) * Think about removing those filetypes: gtd, bsh, cfdg, cfg, inc (merge with "h"?) (5 icons) Yay, that at least sums up to 56 filetypes. This distribution would require about 120kB * 2 + 23 * 36kB = 1MB for icons. Is that ok or still too much? Would someone want to move some filetype into a different group? Nico ps: icns uses compression (jpeg2000 for the larger icon variants, and I think some sort of RLE for the smaller variants), so filesize depends a bit on how an icon looks. But since all document icons look similar, I guess the sizes in this mail are a good approximation. I used the icon visible on the page linked above as reference. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message from the "vim_mac" maillist. For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
