Humanity delete icon uses a wrong concept

[Lionel Dricot]

Binary package hint: humanity-icon-theme

Current "delete" icon in humanity is a red crossed circle.

The red crossed circle is a symbol of danger or interdiction. It's never associated with an action and it's confusing.

The "delete" icon should be immediatly seen as an action. In other themes, it's generally a variation about a trash or some destruction metaphor.

One example : in the accounts window of Empathy, you will see this icon next to each account. It looks like there's a problem with this account or that you are forbidden to use this account. If you want to delete an account, you will not think to click on it.

[Danielle Foré (danrabbit)]

I'm failing to see how this is a bad metaphor.

Google "delete icon" and you'll see at least two icons that look almost the same as ours on the first page.

[Lionel Dricot (ploum-deactivatedaccount)]

I don't accept the "other are doing it" . Also, just think about the metaphor : it's an interdiction sign in nearly every country. If you can provide any ling between the "interdiction" metaphor and the "delete" action, I would be really curious to hear.

But I propose you to do just like launchpad guys are doing right now : show the icon to a bunch of people (preferably non-geeks and who were not using your theme before) and ask them what the icon represent. Then show them a trash. You will be astonished by the result.

This kind of topic is covered in most usability books. I also encourage you to ask opinion of Tango people. They have great experience and always seek the good metaphor, not the one we used for ages.

[Vish (vish)]

Lionel Dricot , When your bug report states "In other themes,"
It seems the report was started because "we are not doing like others ".

I'm a bit confused. so are we supposed to do like others? use the trash can or not ? ;p

Also,in launchpad the icon used for any delete/unsubscribe is similar (-) , the icon in the humanity theme is (/)

I like the idea of the user testing. But its too late for karmic. Maybe by Lucid someone can try this experiment out.
If a similar icon used by others is not used. Users are surely bound to get more confused with the introduction of a new icon. So the new icon needs to be very good at expressing "delete".

It is safer *for now* to stick with metaphors which are more common, even if "others are doing it" ;)

[Lionel Dricot (ploum-deactivatedaccount)]

When I said "other", I was speaking about the google search. The google search doesn't mean anything. In my case, the first result was an interdiction sign, like those on the road. The second result was a green arrow.

Right now, the GNOME icon theme, the Tango theme, the Ubuntu theme until Jaunty were all using a trash to delete. Tango developer also warned a lot about those "false metaphor". The fact that you associate the red circle with delete is not related with the metaphor, it's only because you are used to it. And this is something we want to avoid.

The reason why I'm reporting this bug is that, since I've installed Karmic, I'm constantly trying to find a delete button. I always wonder what the red circle will do and why it's dangerous. In my own application (Getting Things GNOME!), I was not sure which plugin installed this interdiction thing. I even nearly reported a bug against Empathy because it was not possible to delete an account in the Karmic version. It's by chatting with developer that I pointed the root of all of my problems : this icon.

You say that there is no time to test before Karmic. I was using Jaunty and I decided to upgrade to Karmic beta to test. I find immediatly a severe usabilty regression and report it. It's not a feature request : it's a regression.

I see that my message is a bit direct and without humor but don't take it personaly, it's not intended to sound aggressive or anything. I just want to be as clear as possible. Usability is my main concern, my professionnal domain and I feel really bad when I see an usability regression in the software I love ;-) (also noting that this new icon them is just superb and worth being more usable)

[Tiago Silva (tiagosilva)]

I concur with Lionel.

[Franck (alci)]

I quite agree with Lionel, but...

I also notice the Trashcan is not such a good idea either, as I would expect it to be a recoverable deletion, like it is the case on the desktops.
Also notice that some trashcans have the recycle symbol, that resembles the refresh icon, and can lead to bad mistakes (see pgadmin for example !).

[Vish (vish)]

I agree with the concerns raised in this bug report , also another valid comment from a duplicate: that the present icon resembles the 'NO' sign.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/humanity-icon-theme/+bug/454013/comments/3

Franck , makes a very good point that the delete icon and using trash can for delete , should signify a action which can be restored/reverted.

This new icon brings to light the wrong use of the icons in the apps ,
The apps should use the list-remove/gtk-remove/remove icon for such irreversible actions. Rather than the delete icon.

Delete icon should be used for actions similar to the "move to trash".

The present delete icon warns of an irreversible action "No" / "beware"
as is commonly used in icon themes > http://images.google.co.in/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=delete%20icon&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

But , we will not be making any more changes to the humanity-icon-theme(Ubuntu) unless the suggestions are from the design team.

IMO , it would be better to leave it as-is for Karmic and weed out the wrong icon usage by the apps. And consider any further icon change for Lucid.

[Ben Romer (bromer)]

Hi, I'm arriving from my duplicate bug report #454013 and after reading the comments here, I strongly concur with Lionel as well. I disagree strongly with the comment about implied recoverability - there are situations in Nautilus where "move to trash" does not allow for reversal, such as when a file on an SFTP filesystem is "moved to trash."

Also, as important as the shell is, it's not the only app that people use and the icon being displayed is consistently incorrect in several major applications - GIMP, Evolution, context menus in Liferea, context menus in Gnumeric, even the bookmark menu in Firefox. Despite what one application may want to insist on, the vast majority of other apps use gtk-delete to mean deletion, and expecting them all to switch to gtk-remove because of one contentious icon in the default Ubuntu theme is not practical.

From a usability standpoint, the icons that appear for stock GTK controls have the red no circle mapped to gtk-delete, while *a trash can with an undo arrow* is mapped to gtk-undelete. This is inconsistent. Please take a look at the stock button settings for gtk-delete and gtk-undelete (fire up gazpacho or glade and look if you don't believe me).

Why is this hard to fix? Isn't changing the icon mapping simply putting a different icon in the right spots in /usr/share/icons/Human/?

[Ben Romer (bromer)]

To fix this problem temporarily, I did the following:

$ cd /usr/share/icons
$ sudo cp -r Humanity Humanity-fixed
$ cd Humanity-fixed
$ sudo vi index.theme

Change the theme name to "Humanity-fixed", then :wq to save the file

$ sudo find . -name \*delete\* -exec rm {} \;

Then go into the Theme tab on System->Preferences->Appearance, Customize your theme and choose Humanity-fixed from the Icons tab, and the GNOME trashcan icon will be used instead.

Of course, this also means that fixing this problem is simply a matter of removing the offending icon files from the theme.

[ubuntolo (ovitaerc)]

I have to agree, because I was reporting this as a bug too. The current icon for deleting items is not clear at all, you also have to think about buttons' hints translations that can be confusing. For example, the Italian tanslation for the related hint on Evolution souds like "Marks the slected messages for deletion"... Not exactly as simple and clear as "Delete the selected messages".
So confusing icon and confusing text... I'm not exactly an inexperienced user, and at first my favourite solution was to hit the "del" key on the keyboard, just because I knew what it was doing...

[Peter (pstevens555-gmail)]

I was thrown by this earlier... I kept checking and double checking the accounts I was adding to Empathy because I thought the icon was telling me they were mis-configured. Right now I am looking at the tabs at the top of my browser and as similar as the ''+" and the "x" are they seem to be crystal clear in meaning. I understand the the "x" means 'close' in a lot of cases, but I feel that it has a more general meaning to most. Something along the lines of 'make this item go away' Which seems to me to be quite close in meaning to delete...

after searching for "delete icon" (google image search) I see about ten "x" two "crossed circles" and one "trash can" and I see very few crossed circles in the deeper pages...

I would prefer an "x"
regards,
p

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

In <http://live.gnome.org/Empathy/AccountsAndSettings> I have specified that Empathy should use [+][−] buttons for adding and removing accounts, rather than a delete icon next to every account. And the Empathy developers are considering implementing that detail of it, at least, for Gnome 2.30. So I don't think Empathy should be used as an example for whether the delete icon has a good or bad design.

I don't think the No symbol is a great design for delete, but a trash icon isn't good either; it would falsely suggest that the item was going to be sent to the Trash.

[Vish (vish)]

This is a problem since the upstream documentation is not very clear .
After discussion with the xdg spec maintainers , it's clear that :
The delete icon has to be used only for recoverable actions and
 the list-remove needs to be used for permanent delete actions.

I had filed a bug regarding this > Bug 463802 . It should be fixed in the specs soon.

[Vish (vish)]

Interestingly , since the icons has been wrongly used everywhere , Gnome-icon-theme 2.30 will use the exact same icon as humanity.
[http://git.gnome.org/cgit/gnome-icon-theme/tree/48x48/actions/edit-delete.png?h=one-canvas&id=621dd282948d60b1732946e38a5d9d8acbc7a548]

Gnome-icon-theme devs believe , the problem[misrepresented delete icon ] is too wide spread , and too many apps use the wrong icon. hence they agree on this change :(

Marking this as a "wont fix" , for now , until apps use the proper icons.

[Vish (vish)]

Un-assigning the milestone , as fixing this is not a usability win .

[Vish (vish)]

On the other hand apps , can use the trash can icon for recoverable delete actions similar to nautilus using the trash-full icon.

[Tomasz Chrzczonowicz (tch)]

Do you know that some other themes and software use exactly the same design (crossed red circle) or something very similar for "Cancel"?

I understand that the "Trash" icon might have some ambiguity on whether the item in question will be recoverable, but the "Red Circle" icon is completely counter-intuitive.

I already mistakenly removed one of my tomboy notes because of this, when I was tired and had recently switched to Ubuntu.

[Vish (vish)]

@Tomek Chrzczonowicz:
As I mentioned earlier, the apps need to use the right icon.

Kindly file a bug in tomboy to use the edit-remove icon instead. Since the action is an irreversible action it should not use the edit-delete icon.

I realize it isnt the ideal way, Using the trash icon as of now isnt right . But the fix needs to be done in the apps first.

We are however open to other suggestions though.

[Ben Romer (bromer)]

GEdit has Edit->Delete, and is an undoable action, but still gets the ISO No symbol. This is incorrect given this new definition about what GTK_EDIT_DELETE is supposed to mean, but how would this be corrected? What would we change the stock icon to for the trash can to be displayed?

Further, if I enable the Delete action in Nautilus, I get the ISO No symbol and not the minus sign, meaning that even the shell has it wrong.

This change of meaning was not well thought out and I question the sanity of telling every application developer that GTK_EDIT_DELETE doesn't actually mean "delete". Does it really make sense to require a patch and rebuild of *every*single*app* that uses it because someone decided that they wanted to change the semantics of the word "delete"? And GTK_LIST_REMOVE is inappropriate for text and anything else that isn't a list, so what are we to use then?

Suggestions:

Take this change and put it to a general vote, with the icon team getting one vote, and every single app developer affected by this change one vote. A simple "Should the use of GTK_EDIT_DELETE imply reversability?" yea or nay vote should work.

Or, leave GTK_EDIT_DELETE alone, and in the next version of GTK, introduce a GTK_EDIT_UNDOABLE_DELETE that has the new semantics, and *request* developers to switch to the new one for undoable deletes. Link GTK_EDIT_DELETE to the minus sign and GTK_EDIT_UNDOABLE_DELETE to the trash can.

Or, in the next version of GTK, make GTK_EDIT_DELETE obsolete, and replace it with some other constants like GTK_UNDOABLE_DELETE and GTK_PERMANENT_DELETE to force developers to use the new semantics.

In any case, you really ought to put the trash icon back in for the current release, as the ISO No symbol is completely inappropriate for the act of deletion in any context, undoable or not, and is graphically inconsistent with the icon *currently* displayed for GTK_UNDELETE. I suppose the icon is meant as a "don't use" hint for developers who are using the Humanity theme during development, but the correct way to tell them is to deprecate or obsolete the constant for it.

Also: is there a bug tracker on the GNOME website that those of us who feel strongly about this issue should be following? The GIT patch link in comment 14 above appears to be invalid now, and I'd like to actually participate in the discussion, if possible.

[Tomasz Chrzczonowicz (tch)]

> the ISO No symbol is completely inappropriate for the act of deletion in any context, undoable or not, and is graphically
> inconsistent with the icon *currently* displayed for GTK_UNDELETE.

I agree

If you need an icon for something "non-undoable" other than a trash can, how about:

1. A shredder (preferably in mid-action)
2. A diagonally striked-through document (but w/o a circle)
3. A pile of shreds from a shredder
4. A document with a cross-hair overlaid
5. A dog/goat/gnu/current Ubuntu codename animal's head eating a document
6. A burning document (preferably already in half). I guess I've seen it somewhere already.
7. A smoking pile of ash
8. A ripped/torn to pieces document
9. A document being cut halfway through with scissors that have multiple blades.
10. An explosion (mushroom cloud?)
11. A burning ball of crampled-up paper
12. A torch
13. A document held over a torch, match, cigarette lighter, candle, campfire, fire
14. A campfire
15. A document/documents on a plate with a fork and knife next to it
16. An old-styled detonator you see in cowboy films in front of a document
17. A computer/monitor with a cartoon face eating the document
18. A computer/monitor with Rayman-style hands tearing the document in half
19. A document going through a meat grinder
20. A document being inserted into a blender
21. A document with a huge, smoking hole in it that covers most of its surface

And by "document" I actually mean this piece of paper with a folded corner that represents a file.

All those are more intuitive than the "No" sign.

[Vish (vish)]

@Ben Romer :
I havent marked this bug "wont fix" without putting considerable thought or effort.

Bug 463802 was filed only after discussion with Rodney Dawes [fdo specs maintainer] , and he also agreed that the descriptions could be clearer.
He mentioned it would be updated soon , even if Rodney fixes the description , the apps which misuse the icon far outnumber the apps which use the icon correctly.

I'v tried to look into the usage of the delete icon in several apps and considered filing bugs in each of the concerned apps... but the number of apps misusing the icon are too many.

That was when i noticed the gnome-icon-theme also using the same icon. When i asked the concerned devs , they mentioned that they considered using a shredder but gave up since the problem was too wide spread. Instead have used an icon similar to the humanity icon.

I'v given up on this issue and considered leaving the icon as is. Since , even if the humanity icon is removed , the gnome-icon-theme fallback is gonna use a similar icon.

If this is a huge problem , I could just remove the humanity icon and folks can deal with upstream gnome and the apps directly.
I'v spent way too much time on this issue already :(

IMO, it is easier fixing the apps which use the icon correctly , since they are just a few apps.

You can check the gnome-icon at:
http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-icon-theme/tree/gnome
http://people.freedesktop.org/~jimmac/icons/#git

[Ben Romer (bromer)]

I agree to all of that - the biggest issue is convincing everybody to switch the meaning, and even if that were easily possible, there are apps like GEdit which don't have any way to properly represent what they do.

I'm all in favor of removing the ISO No symbol and letting Gnome sort it out - it's the simplest fix that doesn't require both the apps and the online help to be rewritten, and it'll buy some time for the actual meaning of delete to be worked out. :)

[Vish (vish)]

correction: I could just remove the humanity icon *if UX/design team insists* ;)

[Ben Romer (bromer)]

I've just installed the Lucid beta and this is still a problem...

[Tomasz Chrzczonowicz (tch)]

Still a problem with Lucid final...

[Bilal Akhtar (bilalakhtar)]

I don;t think this bug is valid for Humanity anymore, because it should now be referring to ubuntu-mono .

[Chris Wilson (notgary-deactivatedaccount)]

It's been a while since there was any activity on this bug, and I was wondering if anything's happened?