Nicholas Bodley <nbodley at speakeasy dot net> wrote:

> I think so. They are 21st century "writing", they are graphic, and
> convey meaning.

Lots of things convey meaning, and of course drawings were an early
predecessor of writing. But I think they fail to be true writing
systems to the extent that they cannot convey *arbitrary* meaning.

For example, try coming up with a picture, of any size or complexity,
that conveys the same meaning as either of the two sentences in the
previous paragraph, without depicting a writing system.

"Computer icons" are no different from any other small pictures in this
regard. An octagonal red stop sign or circle-with-diagonal-slash, or
for that matter a drawing of a human hand with the index (or middle!)
finger raised, does not become fundamentally different because it
appears on a computer screen.

Writing is 21st-century writing.

> Although most icons are not animated, there's no fundamental reason
> why they couldn't be. (Animated icons would be extremely annoying ,
> however, to some people.)

Add-on packages were available for Windows 3.1 that allowed the user
with too much time on his hands to assign, and even create, animated
icons. These were annoying beyond your wildest imagination; think of
your Program Manager windows being overrun by dozens of tiny frenetic
pop-up ads and you've got the idea. I don't know how it was that the
release of Windows 95 put an end to these, but I'm grateful.

-Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/