Re: HTML icon set was: Additions to the CGI archive

Bert Bos <bert@let.rug.nl>
Message-id: <9401081344.AA17306@freya.let.rug.nl>
From: Bert Bos <bert@let.rug.nl>
Subject: Re: HTML icon set was: Additions to the CGI archive
To: www-talk@www0.cern.ch (* WWW discussion list )
Date: Sat, 8 Jan 1994 14:43:53 +0100 (MET)
In-reply-to: <9401071700.AA07217=guido@voorn.cwi.nl> from "Guido.van.Rossum@cwi.nl" at Jan 7, 94 06:00:20 pm
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Guido van Rossum writes:

 |> >> So if anyone is designing an HTML icon set (is anyone doing that?)
 |> >> I think it would be a good idea to consider this larger set.
 |> 
 |> > What says the author of the HTML+ draft and the WWW gurus. A signal from
 |> > there could help to initiate first steps.
 |
 |> Lets get some graphics artists to work on a really cool set of icons
 |> (as good as Mosaic's world icon), which we can all share.
 |
 |Hmm...  Shouldn't we first agree on an abstract set of icons with
 |(fuzzy) semantics attached to them before letting the artists loose?
 |I can imagine that different clients (assuming there is life after
 |Mosaic :-) may use different icon styles, corresponding to the style
 |of the rest of their user interface (e.g. monochrome, grayscale 3D
 |look, "MTV look", ...) with the same semantics (e.g. file, folder,

I agree, to the point that it would be nice if HTML doc authors could
rely on the availability of some standard set of symbols. But why
should they be images?

My suggestion: create a set of entities (&file;, &folder;, etc.) like
the set that already exists for accented characters (&eacute;, &euml;,
etc.). If we agree on this, maybe Dave Raggett could add such a list
to the HTML+ draft?

Browser developers are then free to display those entities in whatever
way they like. Either as an "ASCII graphic", a bitmap, or a character
from a special symbols font.

Btw. ISO is standardizing the names and approximate look of a small
set of "desktop" icons. I don't have the drafts here at home, but we
should definitely use their names.


Bert
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