> > Finally, I really think we need to do something about the smaller
> > sized icons: they are completely illegible.
>
> I believe this is an important point.
>
> If you look at XCode's documen icons at 16x16 (screenshot below, to
> the left) you will see that you can tell at a glance whether the file
> is .C source code, .H header, or anything else of import. The large
> (relatively to the icon size) and colored text, "C" or "H", helps a lot.
I agree XCode's 16x16 icons are nice. The main reason why I didn't try
to go with 16x16 icons similar to them is that I couldn't come up with
a way to handle longer extensions (e.g. "html").
> Larger icons can still use the Preview paradigm (blank paper + app
> icon + type text below) but IMHO the smaller icons should follow what
> XCode does.
It's not just the "Preview paradigm": Lots of other apps do this, too.
Examples include Safari, CSSEdit, Instruments, Pages, Keynote,
QuickTime Player, iCal, Coda, etc. Some of those programs leave the
extension text out in the 16x16 variant and include only the icon
(Instruments, CSSEdit).
I think the 32x32 variant is still legible, so we're only talking
about 16x16 here.
XCode's approach works fine with 1-char extensions (h, c), ok with 2-
char extensions (mm, rb, ...), not-so-great with three chars (e.g.
expfile.icns in the XCode bundle), not-at-all with 4-char extensions
(nasmfile.icns).
> If we want people to be able to tell the files that are associated
> with Vim from those associated with XCode, we can come up with a
> different graphical hint, such as a colored border--this is just the
> first idea that came to my mind:
Perhaps we could also put the green square behind the letters (with a
very low contrast). But: It's different from all other apps, and I
need a good suggestion how to handle document types with a long
extension that don't have an obvious shorter version ("Python" can
become "Py" without problems, but what about, say, "html", "xhtml",
"dylan", "fscript", "applescript").
Nico
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