[thelist] graphical representation of abstract programming concepts

[Jeff Howden]

hello all,

i'm currently in the midst of developing a debugging utility and am stuck at
a phase of the project i'm not so good at -- design/iconography.  i've done
a fair bit of researching in the hopes of finding some icons that represent
things like arrays (indexed), structures (associative arrays), queries,
strings, numbers, booleans, wddx packets (xml), etc.  i've scoured all the
usual places for icons, but none seem to address ways to represent the more
abstract things i'm looking for.  most of what i've been finding have been
icons that represent applications, desktop elements, and common actions a
user performs like back, cut, copy, paste, forward, stop, refresh, home,
etc.  obviously that's not what i'm looking for.

in my search, i've even gone so far as to research what some of the more
common programming ide's use to represent these things, but haven't come up
with anything.  i suspect it's because it's not easy to do.  however, i
don't doubt that i've missed something in my search though.

i can continue development of this utility without these icons, but will
need to find something satisfactory in order to wrap up the project.  i'd
like to hear thoughts on what things could be used to represent the concepts
i've listed or sources for icons that have already been developed to
accomplish this for either inspiration, license, or purchase.
alternatively, i'd be interested in talking to members of this list or
people anyone from this list can recommend who are capable of constructing
these icons.

one of the tougher requirements is that the icons need to be recognizable at
16x16, though it'd be nice to have 32x32 versions available as well.

anybody have any ideas?

thanks,

.jeff

http://evolt.org/
jeff at members.evolt.org
http://members.evolt.org/jeff/