Iconitis

[Guy Harris]

>The obvious upside of icons is that they make the computer just as usable
>no matter what country the machine is used in ...

Not necessarily.  Consider, for example, an icon for a mail-reading
program, in the form of a US-style mailbox.  If used in some country
where the US-style mailboxes, with the little flag on the side, aren't
used, it won't necessarily mean anything.  I think the Sun386i uses a
different icon for "mailtool", for precisely this reason; unfortunately,
at least at one point they used a postage stamp.  This may well have
been equally understandable in all countries - but then, 0 == 0; it
looked more like a picture to me than a postage stamp, and furthermore a
postage stamp doesn't directly remind me of an inbox or an outbox, so
the association with "mailtool" was rather indirect anyway....

The bottom line is that there is *no* guarantee that, merely by using an
icon, people of all nations - or even people of *your* nation - will
automatically know to what the icon refers.