KDE 4: Text labels underneath toolbar icons

[Stephen Leaf]

On Friday 12 January 2007 2:16 pm, Dennis P wrote:
> First a rant.
>
> KDE 4 will feature text labels underneath toolbar icons by default. As
> explained in http://oxygen-icons.org/users/david/?p=31 the texts spread the
> icons too much. The suggested solution is simple: make shorter text labels,
> the 9 characters of "Save as" are clearly too long and should just
> be "Save", "New message" should be "Write" or maybe "Compose" should be
> allowed which still uses 7 characters.
This maybe me nit-picking and/or stating the obvious. But When shortening the 
wording for a button be careful not to shorten it too far.
For example the "Save as" is vastly different from "Save" in applications such 
as kate, kword, etc.
Looking at the compose dialog I see "Send Mail Via" I will agree with you that 
this is too long. "Send" would be sufficient.
How would you word "Send Later Via"? Personally I'd just drop the "Via" But as 
you described this is too long. that is 10 letters!
So my question then is, How far can you trim before it starts to lose its 
meaning?
If we are to shorten the wording, it needs to still be distinguishable and 
descriptive. you can't always depend on the icon set to do this work for you.

-- 
Stephen Leaf