InSight IML Content Description (PLEASE READ)

[Bowie Poag <bjp primenet com>]

Well, here we go. I spent all day writing this up.. This should give you a
summary of what you're dealing with here.

This document describes in general detail whats contained in the IML
Archive. What I need you guys to do, is to get together and decide
specifically what is going to be of use to you; from there, we can talk
about how we're going to get all this stuff from my hands to yours.

This document is also available via WWW, at the URL listed at the end of
this letter.

Thanks,
Bowie J. Poag


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IML Content Description (021298)         VOL 1/SEC 1 (of 3) Imagery Archive
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[ SECTION #1: IML Archive and Set Heirarchy ]

The IML's Imagery Archive is subdivided into 4 base sets, each of which is
subsequently broken down into 11 respective subsets according to usage,
and classification. All the images currently stored in the four sets are
in Photoshop (.psd) layered format, 64x64 x 24-bit. 

 /---\
| IML |-->Imagery Archive----+
 \---/    Audio Archive..    |
          Context Archive..  |
            		     |                  +-----256 Icons Per Set----+
	   		     +-->Basic Set----->|Widgets         (16 Icons)|
	    		     +-->Deco Set       |Tacks		 (36 Icons)|
	    		     +-->Obsidian Set   |Symbolics       ( 6 Icons)|
	    		     +-->Aurora Set     |Numerics        (10 Icons)|
                             |                  |Lamps		 ( 8 Icons)|
	                     +-->Other Material |General Icons   (85 Icons)|
			     |	     |          |Folder Icons    ( 8 Icons)|
			     |	     |          |Filetypes	 (36 Icons)|
			     |	     |	        |Devices	 (24 Icons)|	
			     |	     |	        |Control Panels  (20 Icons)|
			     |	     |	        |Beacons	 ( 8 Icons)|
                             |       |          +--------------------------+
			     |	     |
 			     |	     +---------> Other Material  (64 Icons)
			     |
			     +-->Wallpaper
				    |	
				    +----------> Wallpaper       (64 Tiles)
		      
					        ===========================
							
						 Basic Set     : 256 Icons
						 Deco Set      : 256 Icons
						 Obsidian Set  : 256 Icons
						 Aurora Set    : 256 Icons

						 Other Materi. :  64 Icons
						 Wallpaper     :  64 Tiles
						        
					        ===========================
							
						Grand Total:  1,152 Images
                                                          

These 1,152 Images (The Imagery Archive) constitute a majority of the IML.  
The Audio and Context archives make up only about 15% of the IML in terms
of size. 

Now that you have a rough picture of how the heirarchy is organized, lets
talk about the 11 subsets.


------------------
Subset #1: Beacons
------------------   

Beacons were visual devices we were going to use in the interface. InSight
was going to feature a "color-reactive" desktop; e.g., depending upon
user-defined usage thresholds and/or application status, the color of this
object would change. For example, lets suppose someone actually built a
Bovine RC5 client for InSight, and you're currently running it in a
minimized state. The Beacon which corresponded to your Bovine RC5
window would glow very bright yellow or red to indicate it was absorbing a
gigantic amount of CPU time. Since Bovine RC5 only uses your machine's
idle time, the instant you went to do anything else, Bovine RC5's Beacon
would slowly dim to green, then to deep blue, to indicate it was using
almost no CPU time.

The plan was, allow the user, the OS, or the application itself to control
the color state of the Beacon. If the application was told to decide, the
programmer could make it flash for alert messages, change color depending
upon CPU usage, whatever. If the OS was told to decide, the OS could
change the Beacon according to CPU usage, memory expenditure, etc...

The basic form of the Beacon is a scalable, miniature "bulb". For purposes
of visual continuity, the bulb was relegated to the upper left corner of
the icon to differentiate it from other color-reactive aspects of the
interface.
 

-------------------------
Subset #2: Control Panels
-------------------------

Nothing that unusual, here. These 20 icons were painted and finalized
before we had decided upon the final array of Control Panels that users
would have been able to employ. As a result, a few of them were painted
with generalized apperances to suit virtually any use.

Control Panels are distinguished from other icons by "left-edge trim".
That is, some sort of designation mark down the left hand side of the
icon to set it apart visually from other icons present on the desktop.


------------------
Subset #3: Devices
------------------

The "Devices" subset features icons which were meant to be applied to
physical (and network) storage devices. Hard disks, floppy drives, network
volumes, CD-ROMs, IoMega Zip & Jaz Drives, and "Unknown" types are given.

For each device, there are icons labelled 0 thru 4, to allow the user to
specify a unique icon per device; We felt that having the same, identical
icon for every device enumerated on a system was a doing a slight
disservice to the user, so we elected to number the icons.

For the sake of tradition, we also included "un-numbered" versions of each
device.

--------------------
Subset #4: Filetypes
--------------------

Nothing unusual here..

We did a quick assesment of the 36 most commonly-used file suffixes and
painted icons for them. The icons are differentiated visually by color in
at least two sets. I can't remember if theyre all color-differentiated.

There are a few Filetypes which ended up in the scrap-heap "Other
Materials" area, such as "Makefile" and a few others. You may want
to look there for some tidbits not included in the 4 main sets.


-----------------------
Subset #5: Folder Icons
-----------------------

Each set has 4 basic Folder types. A "Medium" sized Folder, a "Group" of
folders, a "Big" folder, and a "Two-Tone Group" folder. It was thought
that the user may have wanted to apply different folder apperances
depending upon the media which they contained, which explains the variety
here.

For each variety, there is a Closed version, and an Open version. The
"Open" version of the icon looks pushed in, where as the Closed version
looks popped out.

------------------------
Subset #6: General Icons
------------------------

The General Icons subset is by far the largest of all 11 subsets. It
contains 85 general-purpose icons suited for just about everything. You'll
find a complete set of CD Player buttons here, (e.g. Play, Pause, Eject,
etc) playing card faces (e.g. Club, Heart, Spade, Diamond) , six images
corresponding to the 6 sides of a die, icons for weather conditions,
religious affiliation, etc.

Something for everybody.

Even a Netscape icon. :)

---------------
Subset 7: Lamps
---------------

Remember Beacons? 

Lamps are the larger cousin to the Beacon. A "Lamp" was what actually sat
in the upper left-hand corner of a window's titlebar when it was open on
the desktop in a maximized state. If you minimized the window, it would
turn into a Beacon. If you maximized the Beacon, it would turn back into a
normal window with a Lamp in the upper left corner.

Lamps are to "a maximized window" what Beacons are to "a minimized window".

Get it?

Well, anyway, they both behaved in exactly the same fashion. They were
both color-reactive desktop components.

Lamps are differentiated from Beacons by having significantly larger
"bulb" components. The bulb takes up nearly the entire size of the icon,
only sparing room for the beveled edge on the periphery of the icon.


-------------------
Subset #8: Numerics 
-------------------

We felt it might turn out useful to give application programmers and users
a set of buttons which simply had large numerals on them, 0-9, for such
things as telephone/calculator keypads, counters, password protection
schemes, etc. 

Numeric tiles differ visually from "Tacks". (discussed below)


--------------------
Subset #9: Symbolics
--------------------

Since we already had it in the blueprint of the OS to build in the
plumbing to pull off stuff like color-reactiveness in the desktop, it
seemed a natural outgrowth of that idea to build a concept like this one.

A "Symbolic" is a visual cue given to the user to denote system
performance. The closest thing I can compare it to is the icon of the
snail which pops up when you're playing Quake. :) The slower your machine
is, the more visible the snail icon appears. Symbolics work the same way.

Symbolics were going to be used to denote such things has filesystem
fragmentation, disk thrashing, network congestion, CPU usage, etc. So,
half a dozen Symbolics were created to designate these states. A separate
area of each screen's main titlebar was set aside for this purpose.


-----------------
Subset #10: Tacks
-----------------

The concept of "Tacks" is very, very difficult to describe. They were
intended to be used within a portion of the desktop which resembled a
dynamic, Wharf/Dock-like heirarchial application launcher (yikez, thats a
mouthful..) in where options were represented as a chained series of
letter and number combinations which represented different actions
currently available to user. (whew!)

The concept of "Tacks" was shelved early in the project's development, due
to the fact that such a complicated tool would not have gone over well
with new users. It was a little too... "out there", for most people . :)

In any event, Tacks are icons which have letter and number designations in
their lower right hand corner. A thru Z, 0 thru 9 are represented here.

Great icons, if you're going to be building a Scrabble game. ;)


-------------------
Subset #11: Widgets 
-------------------

Widgets were graphical tiles that were to have been used to form the base
components of a window. Things like the Minimize/Maximize button, the
Window Resize button, the Close Window button, etc.

They are not meant to be used as program icons.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------
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[ SECTION #2: Wallpaper Archive ]

The IML contains 54 individual "Wallpaper" images which were to have been
used as standard-issue backdrops for application usage as well as for the
background of the desktop itself. The images listed in the Wallpaper
directory are not set-specific.

All of the images are 512x512 px in size, directly tileable and seamless, 
and stored in JPEG format.

(..some stuff deleted, here)

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[ SECTION #3: 'Other Materials' Archive ]

The IML contains a directory filled with what can essentially be
considered scrap material. Many of these icons came from a fifth base
set, called Goldleaf, which was cancelled due to time and size
considerations. 

By the time it became clear how many icons would be required to fill out
the first four sets, it became apparent that we didn't need a fifth.

Also listed in the 'Other Materials' archive, are rejected base images
which for one reason or another, were passed up for more favorable
designs. Most of the time, this usually meant that the icon would not have
retained much quality during downscaling or upscaling, as per the design
specifications of the desktop which called for icon visibility between
24px and 80px resolutions.

In english: They looked too ugly when you shrunk 'em. :)

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Questions or comments?

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o--+--------------------------------------------------------------------+--+--o
|()| Bowie J. Poag | bjp@primenet.com |  http://www.insight.dyn.ml.org  |/\|><|
+==+====================================================================+==+==+