- From: David Woolley <david@djwhome.demon.co.uk>
- Date: Wed, 5 May 2004 18:52:36 +0100 (BST)
- To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> Is there any development of a global standard for meanings of icons / > pictograms so that meanings become standard like text? Unicode is about the only place for this, and is where any open standard should get reflected. There are various "dingbat" and other pictorial icons in Unicode. There are also 10,000s of CJK icons, but these have become very abstracted (you could also say that the floppy disk icon for save is becoming a pure abstraction, because people don't use floppy disks any longer). A new iconic language ought to be considered as valid as Chinese (and risks becoming as complex). Representation of non-concrete objects is likely to very difficult to achieve because they will have to be represented indirectly and those representations are likely to be subject to cultural considerations (e.g. black for mourning is wrong in South Asia, where the mourning colour is white). In reality, in user interface design, apart from a few de facto standards, the remaining icons get invented by the designers, and may reflect an imagery theme for the product that has no relation to what the product actually does. They are normally there for frequent users. Occasional users typically have to hover the icon to find out what it means from the tool-tip.
Received on Wednesday, 5 May 2004 18:05:03 UTC