[Echo] New mail-* icons (total of eleven icons)

[Andreas Nilsson]

Nicu Buculei wrote:
> Martin Sourada wrote:
>> On Mon, 2008-09-15 at 11:35 +0300, Nicu Buculei wrote:
>>> You have two icons, one pointing left (reply) and another pointing 
>>> right (forward). Not sure the likeness to the forward operation is 
>>> wise.
>>> Here is how this icon looks in the default Thunderbird theme: the 
>>> same back arrow as for "reply" but *two* envelopes (you reply by 
>>> using more than one mail) - but this may not work at 16x16, here you 
>>> do not display the envelope.
>>>
>> I use Evolution so I am quite used to the current Echo icons which use
>> (the 24x24 variants are displayed there) the same metaphor I used here.
>> It's the same with Gnome icon theme, though they do not use straight
>> arrows. It's further distinguished by colour (same colours like in gnome
>> to keep consistent with them). Also the mail-forward bears now some
>> likeness to forward, which is IMHO good. I also checked oxygen icons and
>> they also use same metaphot.
>>
>> I personally would think a little bit at loss at the meaning of the
>> Thunderbird icon, as you describe it. Basically when you forward a mail
>
> Screenshot attached.
>
>> the point is that you take the original mail and send it over to someone
>> else, i.e. forward it, you need not to add another explanatory mail to
>> that - thus the combination of forward arrow and one mail envelope.
>
> I have to disagree. "Reply all" will send the reply to all people 
> listed in TO: or CC: (is kind of a primitive mailing list substitute), 
> all the people receiving your reply already have the original email. 
> You don't send the message to any new address (thus it does not 
> involve anything like forward).
>
> These days, the most common usage for "reply all" is when a mailing 
> list does not se the Reply-to header and when using a plain "reply" 
> button your message is sent only to the original sender, not also to 
> the list. So you have to use "Reply all" to send it both to the 
> original sender and to the list.
>
>> However having two envelopes and one "reply" arrow seem to me more like
>> replying to more than one e-mail at once (sometimes might be an useful
>> feature :-D)... But come to think of it, it might be useful to have both
>> ltr and rtl variants (sadly enough nothing supports it for these icons)
>> since the directions of arrows have opposite symbolic meaning in rtl...
>>
>> But thanks for the suggestion :)
>>
>>> Note: I think it is a mistake that the 16x16 icon has both of the 
>>> arrows pointing left (back), unlike the other sizes. The set should 
>>> be consistent internally.
>>>
>> I just followed the example set by gnome icon theme - they use arrows
>> pointing in both directions in bigger sizes and arrows pointing only
>> left in 16x16. Oxygen uses doubled arrow pointing left in all sizes. Do
>> you think I should try to rework the bigger sizes, the 16x16 or leave it
>> as is now?
>
> I think now is a bug (and also a bug in the gnome icon theme), so the 
> arrows in all the variant of the icon should point the same directions.
> I leave up to decide if the direction is only left or both left and 
> right based or may take above of "reply all" not being related to 
> "forward".
Totally agree that this is inconsistent and bad. I like your ideas a lot 
better.
Did you file a bug against gnome-icon-theme already, or should I do that?

I'm also going to see if it's possible to get rid of some of the 
envelope noise in the evolution message list, right now it uses a icon 
for every single state, and all of them are envelopes. Just makes things 
look cluttered.
- Andreas