Icon theme specification: Standardizing icon names

[Kenneth Wimer]

* Frans Englich <frans.englich at telia.com> [Oct 20. 2004 17:59]:
> > On Tuesday 19 October 2004 08:25, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> > It suffices to say:
> >
> > Gnome will never ship any flags, nor depend on any software or standard
> > that mandates the existance of flags. The same goes for Red Hat.
> 
> But you do ship browsers which allows the selection of character encodings? As 
> said, you don't have to ship the actual flag symbols, but images that are 
> blank, transparent or have some trivial symbol. The specification wouldn't 
> force you to have actual Taiwanese/whatever flags, only to have images named 
> flag-xx(or use the yet to be specified pseudo icon mechanism). In either 
> case, you won't show flags in your interfaces -- wouldn't it be ok to have 
> files on the hard disk named flag-xx, where xx is per ISO 639?
> 

I think that the past has clearly shown that using flags can be a very
tricky matter. Microsoft has regretted doing so on several occasions.

As do dictators, flags tend to change over time. Without a carefull eye
you are pissing people off from one day to the next without knowing.

I have received *many* complaints that I, as American, intentionally put
the American flag on top of a crystal icon I made for SUSE when actually
I put the british flag on top and the marketing people made me change
it.  Flags are very powerfull metaphors, in good and bad ways. I suggest
staying away from them.

Bye,
Kenneth

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