Redesign of some stock icons

[Magnus Bergman <magnusbe algonet se>]

Some of the GTK stock icons have been criticized for more or less good
reasons. Some are mentioned in bugs (#73269, #99840), one those are
scheduled for 2.6. I think it would be a good idea to deal with all of
them at the same time. To my knowledge all the ones being criticized
are:

GTK_STOCK_CLEAR     (being "unclear")
GTK_STOCK_CLOSE     (too "negative" looking)
GTK_STOCK_OK        (was origanally meant to mean "default")
GTK_STOCK_OPEN      (why should a folder mean open?)
GTK_STOCK_REVERT_TO_SAVED
GTK_STOCK_SAVE
GTK_STOCK_SAVE_AS   (nobody saves to disks anymore)


CLEAR

  Sugested alternatives: an eraser or a windshield wiper.

CLOSE

  I havn't seen any sugestions, but perhaps a more positive
  color would help?

OK

  Everybody think icon is bad but I don't think anybody has
  come up with a good alternative. I think we must lower our
  standard and settle for something that's just less bad (at
  least until someone manages to come up with something good).
  I also believe that the use of OK is discouraged and should
  not exist, to it IS used so it has to be dealt with. If
  nobody has some even less bad suggestion, mine is a green
  circle or a green square.

OPEN

  Perhaps an arrow up from the folder, or a file comming up
  from the folder will make it slightly better. So it can be
  interpreted as "take a file out from a folder".

SAVE (and friends)

  My initial thought was that an arrow down into the folder or
  a file going into the folder would be good. But that could
  easilly be interpreted as "put the file back into the folder"
  which suggests that the file will be closed as well. What
  really happens is that the changes are applied. So perhaps a
  file with an apply icon would be logical, but on the other
  hand very different from what every body is used to. But
  revert_from_saved could as least be illistrated as "revert
  from folder" (since it's really closer related to open than to
  save anyway).


One might even argue that the whole open/save concept is flawed. In
older programs (from the time then people actually saved to floppy
disks) it was called "load" and "save". Icons for these actions was
often disks with an arrow pointing to the disk from the left and an
arrow pointing from the disk to the right respectively. At some point
"load" was replaced with "open" and save bacame just a disk. I guess it
began as an atempt to better comply with a document centric philosophy.

The term open implies that you put the document in an open state, but it
rather copies the document into memory (which is closer to what load
implies). The long term solution, I think, will be a model-view-control
approach. There open means "open a new view (and control) for the
document model". Then the save option (and the problematic save icon)
could be ditched. But question is of course: what is the least broken
way to deal with things right now.