The icon for Pe is almost indistinguishable from StyleEdit for red/green color blind people.

[jstressman]

For people who have red/green deficient vision, the icons for StyleEdit and Pe are almost indistinguishable, especially at smaller sizes where the slight difference in the pencils becomes less pronounces and the over-all color of the icon (from the paper) becomes the major visually distinguishing factor.

This is the most common form of color blindness, affecting from 7% to 10% of males.

​http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness

These 2 links give you an idea how the icons look to color deficient folks. (The light/darkness is even less pronounced to me. The papers are essentially identical to me.)

​http://colorfilter.wickline.org/?a=1;r=;l=0;j=1;u=www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/applications/stylededit.html;t=p

​http://colorfilter.wickline.org/?a=1;r=;l=0;j=1;u=www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/applications/pe.html;t=p

As a result of this, I've redone the Pe icon for myself to be very easily distinguishable from the StyleEdit icon. See the attached image.

I've borrowed the little parenthses from the XEmacs icon and adjusted them to take into account the scale of the icon, like the other text lines. So they won't show up at the smallest size.

[jstressman]

StyleEdit, Pe, and the new Pe icon I did up.

[jstressman]

the new Pe icon.

[Disreali]

I actually like the blue icon more than the original.

However, PE is an external project and I'm not sure who would make decisions on implementing a new icon. That would mot likely be something to bring up on the projects own issue tracker. ​http://developer.berlios.de/projects/pe-editor/

I think it is good that you are point out usability issues that colour-blind users would encounter.

[X512]

I think that this ticket is invalid because:

1) Pe is not a Haiku component.

2) This change will affect 90%(100% - 10% from your info) of users, that don't need(and possibly don't want) it.

3) At size 16x16 your icon can't be distinguishable with StyledEdit icon without colors.

[zooey]

Replying to X512:

I think that this ticket is invalid because:

1) Pe is not a Haiku component.

Correct.

2) This change will affect 90%(100% - 10% from your info) of users, that don't need(and possibly don't want) it.

Hm, if we'd follow that train of thought, we wouldnt do any localization in Haiku, as at least 90% of our users speak English anyway ...

If the two icons look almost indistinguishable to someone, the actual purpose of the icon (to identify an application visually) gets lost. And if a different icon solves that, I'm all for it. Incidentally, I'm the maintainer of Pe and I happen to be red-green blind myself, and I find that the new icon for Pe makes them both much easier to identify.

3) At size 16x16 your icon can't be distinguishable with StyledEdit icon without colors.

Right, and the new icon is actually using different colors, which are more distinguishable for color blind people - I have no idea why you reject the new icon if you haven't even looked at it.

Still, I'm closing this one here as there is a corresponding bug in Pe's bug tracker now.

[jstressman]

Since I can attach files here... I made a couple more variations on colors for the pencil. I added a picture showing all the similar looking icons for various editors I've come across so we can see how it looks among them and how they compare for visual clarity and distinction. (yes, some of these are red/green... but at least for me personally this usage doesn't affect the visual clarity the way the paper color did.)

[X512]

Replying to zooey:

Hm, if we'd follow that train of thought, we wouldn't do any localization in Haiku, as at least 90% of our users speak English anyway ...

English Locale don't affect users that use other locale.

If the two icons look almost indistinguishable to someone, the actual purpose of the icon (to identify an application visually) gets lost. And if a different icon solves that, I'm all for it. Incidentally, I'm the maintainer of Pe and I happen to be red-green blind myself, and I find that the new icon for Pe makes them both much easier to identify.

If so it's better to redesign icon and use concept other from pages and pencil to make Pe more distinguishable. Now current icon looks better.

Right, and the new icon is actually using different colors, which are more distinguishable for color blind people - I have no idea why you reject the new icon if you haven't even looked at it.

Of course I have looked at it.

[phoudoin]

Replying to jstressman:

Since I can attach files here... I made a couple more variations on colors for the pencil.

I wonder why your BeTeX icon have such a big eraser on his pencil ;-)

[jstressman]

phoudoin: I didn't do that BeTex icon. :) I just added those other icons in for comparison.

That icon comes from the "Haiku'd BB Icons" pack by "meanwhile". ​http://haikuware.com/directory/view-details/system-files/icons/haikued-bb-icons

The XEmacs, StyleEdit, and Icon-O-Matic icons all come from the Haiku sources. BeTex comes from the HBBI pack.

I only altered the Pe ones.

Looking through the Haiku icons, I see that I also need to change the different Pe associated filetypes to the new paper color if the developers actually decide to switch to a new icon color scheme.

[jstressman]

Just a follow-up note on this.

I've also created the related icons for Pe associated file types, and tweaked the main Pe icon again to better center the text.

I wrote up an article on my Haiku blog and linked the zip file of all the icons at the bottom of that: ​http://haikudou.blogspot.com/2012/08/new-redgreen-color-blind-friendly-pe.html

I hope this can be of use to other color blind folks like myself. :)

[leavengood]

I like the new source code icon (the green never made much sense IMO, besides the colorblind issue.) That MIME type definition is part of Haiku, so could you open a new ticket regarding updating that icon? You can assign it to me. Assuming no one objects I can update the source code MIME type icon this weekend.

[jstressman]

Added #8867 with the requested files. :)

I couldn't assign it to you since I don't have that access level on Trac, nor was I sure which component it should go under, if any... so I leave that part to you also. Thanks!

[zooey]

These icons have now been applied to Pe and should take effect whenever Pe's optional packages are updated. Thanks, Justin!