Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!psuvax1!psuvm!uh2
From: UH2@PSUVM.BITNET (Lee Sailer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Icon sizes, Workbench hand (was Re: My AmigaDOS 1.4 wishlist)
Message-ID: <89227.165248UH2@PSUVM>
Date: 15 Aug 89 20:52:48 GMT
References: <16025@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> <1989Aug8.220028.13827@nc386. <10706@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Organization: Penn State University - Center for Academic Computing
Lines: 30

In article <10706@boulder.Colorado.EDU>, rademach@tramp.Colorado.EDU (Simon Rademacher) says:
>
>
>1) Include program to shrink all icons to standard size.  The problem is
>that detail is lost and the result could be horrendous to look at.

Sounds like a good senior project (at least) for someone interested in
graphics.  How to skrink a drawing without losing the important detail?
Similar to the work being done on character recognition that starts by
reducing all the components of the picture to one-pixel wide skeleton.

>
>3) Include two icons for each program.  (Oops, forgot interlace.  4 icons?
>this is getting out of hand.)

Can't you make interlace icons by duplicating each horizontal row?


Oral History

A long time ago, someone from Commodore (Carolyn Scheppner, I think) posted
a list of principles that were originally used for designing workbench icons.
Included some notion of minimum size, and that all lines should be at least
2 pixels wide.  In those dark ages, there was still a notion, I think, that
many Amigas would be connected to TVs, so visual design was done with the
blurriness of typical TVs in mind.

Mac icons are clean and professional looking in part because of their smallness
and apparent detail.  Amiga icons tend to look like they were drawn with
children's crayons.