[ajdt-dev] A is for Aspect... or Annotation?

[Matt Chapman <MCHAPMAN@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

As you may have noticed, in Eclipse 3.1M4 the JDT team have added an icon 
for annotations. It's no great surprise that they chose an "A" in a circle 
for this, similar to the "C" in a circle for classes. This means it is 
very similar to our icon for aspects -- it's blue instead of orange, but 
this similarity is potentially confusing to users, as they can appear in 
the same context.

Please see this bug for more details:
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=84431

Basically either they will change their icon, or we will have to change 
ours. One factor in this decision is the suitability of alternatives in 
each case. They have an '@' icon as an alternative, but they don't like 
the appearance of this in such a small icon. I'm not sure what we could 
use as an alternative, so my questions for you are:

1. Can you suggest a way of making the '@' annotation icon clearer, or 
suggest an alternative icon for annotations?

2. Can you suggest an alternative icon for aspects? If not a letter, then 
what sort of symbol? What does an aspect look like???

Any design has to be simple enough to fit in a 16x16 icon (including the 
containing circle).

-- 
Matt Chapman, mchapman@xxxxxxxxxx
AJDT Development, http://www.eclipse.org/ajdt