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From: lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca (Larry Phillips)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Icon sizes, Workbench hand (was Re: My AmigaDOS 1.4 wishlist)
Message-ID: <694@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca>
Date: 10 Aug 89 21:23:36 GMT
Lines: 55
To: van-bc!rnews

In <2584@cbnewsm.ATT.COM>, nsw@cbnewsm.ATT.COM (Neil Weinstock) writes:
>>Editting my own icons won't change the Amiga's appearance for everyone else.
>>Interlace mode, even with a flicker-fixer looks stupid because everything is
>>wide and flat.  What I'm saying is this:  I don't wan't shrinking of icons
>>just to make my own workbench look better.  That misses the point completely.
>>I think shrinking of icons would make the Amiga look more professional to 
>>people considering purchasing an Amiga instead of a Mac or Clone, and that
>>would make it all worthwhile.
>
>Bingo.  One of the things that makes the Mac's icon-based interface usable
>whereas Workbench is not is the fact that all icons are the same size, and
>small.

Workbench is unusable to me, but icon size has absolutely nothing to do with
my opinion of it.

>  I think that the Amiga developers made a mistake by not restricting
>icon size to a small standard rectangle.  Why?  Well, it's darn near impossible
>to create a neat arrangement of icons in a window without snapshotting all
>the time.  Wanna have default icons for files without .info files?  Try
>arranging them.  Good luck.  Check out Jazzbench to see the difficulties
>involved.  Furthurmore, many programmers like to abuse the system and create
>enormous icons (example: NewZap).  Sure, I can redo them or shrink them.
>I shouldn't have to.  I'm not particularly artistic, and even if I were I
>wouldn't want to be forced to be spending time playing with other peoples icons all the 
>time.

I don't think the mistake was in allowing any sized icons. I might agree with
you if you faulted the manner in which you have to fiddle with the arrangement
of them, rather than having a smart algorithm built in to arrange them for you.
I also do not consider large icons to be an abuse of the system, though I am
not particularly fond of large icons. To each his own... if you don't like
large icons, fine, but please don't try to restrict the preferences of others
just because you want things a certain way.



>Unfortunately, I'm not sure what can be done at this point to remedy the
>problem.  Sigh.

Nothing, I hope.

>Sorry, this is a sore spot with me.

Me too.

-larry

--
"So what the hell are we going to do with a Sun?" - Darlene Phillips -
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|   //   Larry Phillips                                                 |
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