Hi,
I must admit I feel some "Not-invented here" has its place here with the edit-cut icon. This is a call to revert, especially that the action is among top popular actions.

What important are we fixing here by removing the good old scissors that everyone uses on desktop and mobile?

Pasting small versions to show how in addition, "cut" is easy to confuse with copy or any "document" icon:



The replacement also slightly conflicts with visualization of "broken document":


Also, unlike the new visuals indicate, "cutting" is not about cutting part of the selection off, but cutting off the entire selection.

This is the same as the save icon, why remove the almighty floppy disk? when everyone is using it. For all intents and purposes the scissors is the same.
When you cut something with scissors it's for the most part a clean cut. Note that there are scissors with dented blades. In computers we work with documents or their graphical representation which is paper sheets, therefore the icon represents to that the effect the action the user is doing, cutting a paper sheet / cutting a document.

Now, in Oxygen which is the reference for Breeze there isn't a broken document icon, such is determined that the icon doesn't exist and it's not used on Plasma or any of the K-apps.

This is different in Gnome (where Tango was mostly used, and which the current Gnome icons were based on, also an icon theme that is old like many of the metaphors being replaced) this action does exists, and there is an icon.

So, such conflict is not happening for us.

jstaniek wrote: Also, unlike the new visuals indicate, "cutting" is not about cutting part of the selection off, but cutting off the entire selection.

I beg to differ, I just cut off part of the original selection, not its entirety.

jstaniek wrote:
Pasting small versions to show how in addition, "cut" is easy to confuse with copy or any "document" icon:

.

Which is wrong because the icons are not meant for that size. But putting that aside, I do have a hard time however trying to make my not really good eye-sight to interpret them as being similar, which to an extent is the reason copy and cut have the little fold in them.

The usability test of the Breeze theme showed that the Cut icon had by far the lowest quality indicator of all Breeze icons, with 5.5 being a really really bad number. That does not mean we absolutely have to stick with scissors, but it clearly indicates the current icon does not work. Therefore, unless we come up with a new icon that works at least as well as the scissors, I agree with Jaroslaw that sticking with what users know is better than comic up with a new metaphor which they do not associate correctly with the function it is supposed to represent.

I am not against coming up with new metaphors for known functions, but they should never decrease usability.

colomar wrote:The usability test of the Breeze theme showed that the Cut icon had by far the lowest quality indicator of all Breeze icons, with 5.5 being a really really bad number. That does not mean we absolutely have to stick with scissors, but it clearly indicates the current icon does not work. Therefore, unless we come up with a new icon that works at least as well as the scissors, I agree with Jaroslaw that sticking with what users know is better than comic up with a new metaphor which they do not associate correctly with the function it is supposed to represent.

I am not against coming up with new metaphors for known functions, but they should never decrease usability.

Well yeah.. it's a new icon and metaphor. Wasn't that expected to happen?.

Uri_Herrera wrote:

colomar wrote:The usability test of the Breeze theme showed that the Cut icon had by far the lowest quality indicator of all Breeze icons, with 5.5 being a really really bad number. That does not mean we absolutely have to stick with scissors, but it clearly indicates the current icon does not work. Therefore, unless we come up with a new icon that works at least as well as the scissors, I agree with Jaroslaw that sticking with what users know is better than comic up with a new metaphor which they do not associate correctly with the function it is supposed to represent.

I am not against coming up with new metaphors for known functions, but they should never decrease usability.

Well yeah.. it's a new icon and metaphor. Wasn't that expected to happen?.

My screenshot comes form a standard Plasma 4, Kate's Edit menu, as rendered by Qt 4. I even made my fonts larger (and thus menus) than they are by default. (openSUSE)
(Please note that we're not fully in control of such default settings: so often distributions do)

@colomar best explained what I wanted to share.

We know the story with the floppy concept. The scissors, on the other hand, is a universally known artifact so I don't think these two are comparable.
What's common to both; users know direct association because of ~30 years of history.
I wouldn't feel there's a room for discussion if there are alternatives used somewhere. But for the second time (after the undo/redo case) I feel this is a bit too brave decision to stay away from the known concepts for extremely clear reason. If there's a working replacement, confirmed by tests, great.

And regarding introducing a new concepts... we're not the ones with the power on the market. We're a runner-up, holding a major part of the 1% of the market (Linux). It's harder to forgive such guys

Regarding the similarity to document icons, I think KDE uses them (see file-new for if you need examples close to the menu).
The 'broken icon' itself is known in IE, I mentioned it especially because it's almost identical, and used by maybe 20% of the global userbase, so like by 40 x more people that the KDE userbase. I mean real user's systems; these include non-KDE software too even if we're looking at Linux. And these are Windows systems too. Many users of my app do not run Plasma but I'd like to have KDE icons that work for them.

Uri_Herrera wrote:Well yeah.. it's a new icon and metaphor. Wasn't that expected to happen?.

Even the save icon which has a new metaphor (and one which I think could be improved as well) and even the remove icon which has, in my opinion, simply an incorrect metaphor (it is a "do not enter" sign, not a "remove" sign), got better scores (7.5 each) than the cut icon (5.5).
So no, it's not just the fact that the metaphor is new. Why do we even do icon tests if we go ahead and simply dismiss their results afterwards?

I don't mean that you're doing bad work. You're doing great work all in all!
However, nobody is perfect, and we do usability testing to find out where we can improve our work (I welcome usability tests of everything I've worked on, too!). So if they point out a problem, we should act on that, and not dismiss the results as "to be expected".

jstaniek wrote:

Uri_Herrera wrote:

colomar wrote:The usability test of the Breeze theme showed that the Cut icon had by far the lowest quality indicator of all Breeze icons, with 5.5 being a really really bad number. That does not mean we absolutely have to stick with scissors, but it clearly indicates the current icon does not work. Therefore, unless we come up with a new icon that works at least as well as the scissors, I agree with Jaroslaw that sticking with what users know is better than comic up with a new metaphor which they do not associate correctly with the function it is supposed to represent.

I am not against coming up with new metaphors for known functions, but they should never decrease usability.

Well yeah.. it's a new icon and metaphor. Wasn't that expected to happen?.

My screenshot comes form a standard Plasma 4, Kate's Edit menu, as rendered by Qt 4. I even made my fonts larger (and thus menus) than they are by default. (openSUSE)
(Please note that we're not fully in control of such default settings: so often distributions do)

@colomar best explained what I wanted to share.

We know the story with the floppy concept. The scissors, on the other hand, is a universally known artifact so I don't think these two are comparable.
What's common to both; users know direct association because of ~30 years of history.
I wouldn't feel there's a room for discussion if there are alternatives used somewhere. But for the second time (after the undo/redo case) I feel this is a bit too brave decision to stay away from the known concepts for extremely clear reason. If there's a working replacement, confirmed by tests, great.

And regarding introducing a new concepts... we're not the ones with the power on the market. We're a runner-up, holding a major part of the 1% of the market (Linux). It's harder to forgive such guys

Regarding the similarity to document icons, I think KDE uses them (see file-new for if you need examples close to the menu).
The 'broken icon' itself is known in IE, I mentioned it especially because it's almost identical, and used by maybe 20% of the global userbase, so like by 40 x more people that the KDE userbase. I mean real user's systems; these include non-KDE software too even if we're looking at Linux. And these are Windows systems too. Many users of my app do not run Plasma but I'd like to have KDE icons that work for them.

Well then, we can ask the users of Nitrux, Compass and Flattr that have being using an icon and metaphor similar to this for the past 17-19 months if they have noticed, or failed to identify the action of "cut" with the icon presented to them in the context where the icon is actually used.

Which leads me to... well that depends on how you see it, I know I have changed my own icons lots of times, lots. And like always, every time a new style was introduced people would complain that "why the change" "I hate it" "why!, you've ruined it" and then hundreds more loving and embracing the changes.

If I could port my work to Windows I could have knowledge of a bigger user base and have the insight of whether the wider population agrees to the metaphors or not.

It might be a new metaphor, but it's really hard to understand. Even knowing that it symbolizes cut, I can't explain how it symbolizes cut...

How about a small modification? I've added my suggestion on the second row:

colomar wrote:

Uri_Herrera wrote:Well yeah.. it's a new icon and metaphor. Wasn't that expected to happen?.

Even the save icon which has a new metaphor (and one which I think could be improved as well) and even the remove icon which has, in my opinion, simply an incorrect metaphor (it is a "do not enter" sign, not a "remove" sign), got better scores (7.5 each) than the cut icon (5.5).
So no, it's not just the fact that the metaphor is new. Why do we even do icon tests if we go ahead and simply dismiss their results afterwards?

I don't mean that you're doing bad work. You're doing great work all in all!
However, nobody is perfect, and we do usability testing to find out where we can improve our work (I welcome usability tests of everything I've worked on, too!). So if they point out a problem, we should act on that, and not dismiss the results as "to be expected".

Because the save icon while new to Plasma in general, is not a completely new 2014 metaphor. It's been in use for the past 2 years at best so it's already in most people's mind. Specially those with a recent smartphone.

I've also only been adding icons to Breeze not changing them from suggestions or otherwise

veqz wrote:It might be a new metaphor, but it's really hard to understand. Even knowing that it symbolizes cut, I can't explain how it symbolizes cut...

How about a small modification? I've added my suggestion on the second row:

It's more of a menu to me, it's also really wide in comparison to the others.

LOL =)
I started this before "colomar, Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2014 12:18 am"


1st off:
The icon (or a special variant) has to work at 16x16px - that's not subject to discussion.

Now, back on topic: The nmfnms theme played on the idea of operating on stacks:





NOTICE:
these icons have the defect of being all too similar to each other, i'm just posting to prove that I do absolutely NOT mind to question last-century-office mataphors.

That said, the present cut icon frankly looks like an index chart to me - at any size.

Systematically we have:
copy: a document and it's clone (the action's result)
paste: a clipboard, (the action data source - so much for the office thing
and cut: a ripped apart document (which seems to refer to the action's result again?!)

Thing is: "cut" does not lead to a ripped apart document, but a modified (shortened) document and data on the clipboard.
I'm not sure whether we can bring a doc and a clipboard into one icon, but maybe a shortened document and a slice floating over it or being set out to the right?

Sth. into this direction:

luebking wrote:Sth. into this direction:

Yes! That looks a lot less like a popup-menu than my version.

What do you think Uri?

A non-washed-out version (object snapping sucks with outlined objects

Actually, the top part feels a bit disconnected. Maybe you should try to not use the darker line on the edge where the cut happened, to show that there was supposed to be a continuation there? And the same with the small part of the edge still visible on the lower part.

luebking wrote:A non-washed-out version (object snapping sucks with outlined objects

This may indeed work better than the current icon, but I agree with veqz that it looks like we now have three parts of a document instead of one document with a small piece cut out.
Veqz' version got that aspect better, but maybe the black part is what lead to the impression that it looks like a menu. I'm not sure.

luebking wrote:LOL =)
I started this before "colomar, Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2014 12:18 am"


1st off:
The icon (or a special variant) has to work at 16x16px - that's not subject to discussion.

Now, back on topic: The nmfnms theme played on the idea of operating on stacks:





NOTICE:
these icons have the defect of being all too similar to each other, i'm just posting to prove that I do absolutely NOT mind to question last-century-office mataphors.

That said, the present cut icon frankly looks like an index chart to me - at any size.

Systematically we have:
copy: a document and it's clone (the action's result)
paste: a clipboard, (the action data source - so much for the office thing
and cut: a ripped apart document (which seems to refer to the action's result again?!)

Thing is: "cut" does not lead to a ripped apart document, but a modified (shortened) document and data on the clipboard.
I'm not sure whether we can bring a doc and a clipboard into one icon, but maybe a shortened document and a slice floating over it or being set out to the right?

Sth. into this direction:

Scaling a 22px icon to 16px doesn't work, it's going to look blurry, like the in the image, that's what I meant.

And yes the (cleaner) version of this icon looks fine. By the way, make a pull request at the github repo or mail it to me.