[libvoikko] New icons for libreoffice-voikko

[Sjur Moshagen]

Den 17. nov. 2011 kl. 17.25 skrev Harri Pitkänen:

> New extension icon for libreoffice-voikko is now available:
> 
>  http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/voikko/changeset/4054
> 
> This new icon is professionally designed and should be distinctive even after 
> the language specific symbols are later removed from it. Matching logo for 
> Voikko is also available on our web site:
> 
>  http://voikko.sourceforge.net
> 
> In case you need other language specific icons for Voikko, let me know. The 
> artist has kindly offered to design them for us.

The new logo and icon look great:)

The only issue I see is the old one - letting country flags (or something close to them) represent languages. There are many languages without a country (most of them, actually), there are many countries with more than one language (most of them, actually), and there are even some languages that are spoken in many countries. And there are related language communities that share a common identity and therefore use one flag - but they are still different languages (at least regarding orthography and proofing tools).

I do recognise the visual power of a graphic as opposed to a textual label, and I have no good alternative to suggest. But I still would like to discuss how to deal with things like:

* what should an icon for North, Lule and South Sámi look like? With a Sámi flagg-like fill, and then the language code letters in the lower right corner? Something else?
* what would you do with a language for a community without a flag? (perhaphs those languages are not candidates for voikko (+hfst) implementations, and thus can be kept outside this discussion)
* how do you design an icon for, let's say, German? Three countries have German as the main language, and then some with German as a minority language
* if there came to be a Sweden-Finnish speller (or, say, a Meänkieli speller), how would the icon for it be different from this new icon? Would it need to be?

This is not meant to spoil the fun, just to raise a few points that might be problematic in the future. In the Sámi case, the future is quite close.

Sjur