Re: A Proposal For The Addition Of Color-Reactiveness To The GNOME Desktop

[Soren Harward <soren shell cinternet net>]

I think that the theory behind color-reactiveness is great (provide
visual, unobtrusive [hopefully] continunous, status information) but I
think that relying on color might not be such a good idea.  I have a
friend who is completely color blind; though he has adapted fairly well,
he still cannot judge color at all.  For instance, he relies on position
of traffic lights and not color because he can't tell the difference
between red and green in the daytime.  Also, if gnome is to be an
internationally used interface, it needs international cultural
compatibility, including colors.  Though red and green might be perfectly
clear to an American or European as "stop" and "go," then might mean
completely different things in another country.  I think that this is a
great idea, but it needs some refinement.  Can we use symbols as well as
colors?  Can we make a set of standard colors for ALL applications that
the user can set themselves?  As a rough proposal, how about we have a
small array of status lights like so:

red	critical error/message
yellow	non critical message
green	running as normal
black	suspended / awaiting input
blue	in background

We might put these lights / shapes on the status bar, or we might have a
separate 'top' like program status monitor with them

/-------------------------------------------------\
|                  Soren Harward                  |
|Assistant Sysadmin/Tech Support - Cinternet, Inc.|
|   Voice: 891-1228         soren@cinternet.net   |
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On 20 May 1998, Miroslav Silovic wrote:

> Sascha Ziemann <szi@aibon.ping.de> writes:
> 
> > Handicapped persons, who can not distinguish between different
> > colors, have obviously a problem with your lamps but not with
> > traffic lights. Furthermore it is much easier to recognise a
> > combined change of color and position, although this is probably
> > only important for quick reactions on the the change. And who on
> > earth should remember the codings for 6 different colors flashing in
> > different order for all applications? And coding a processbar with
> > color shades is also quite unusable. I don't think that someone is
> > able to say from a color shade "the download will last 5 minutes".
> 
> Well, eye is extremely sensitive to color gradients, and if you use
> continuous status information (say, 5-6 special conditions, like
> Error, Query, Inactive), plus gradient from red to violet, you
> /would/ be able to tell by eye if the color is changin - if that's
> what the application wants you to see.
> 
> Regarding color blind: while the feature is useless to them, it could
> be configurable in WM so that they can turn it off. For everybody
> else, color is both suble and very effective visual cue.
> 
> -- 
> I refuse to use .sig
> 
> 
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