Fix menu icons and items to follow Apple HIG.

[verm]

Just like the topic says, right now all the icons are turned on which isn't good for MAC. It will stay that way until some menu issues on other ports are fixed as it's easier to have it look the same.

A few comments from the HIG are of note:

• Don't add icons to all menu items.
• Avoid superfluous icons, ie. anything that's obvious like Save, Open, Copy, Paste.
• Icons should give information and have value.

See the full doc here:  Apple HIG.

[nielsm]

Let's take a round-up of various native Mac applications' use of icons on menu items:

• Garage Band: None whatsoever.
• iMovie: None, not even on the Share menu which has stuff like iTunes and YouTube on it.
• TextWrangler (freeware text editor): None.
• iWork (Pages, Numbers, Keynote): Nothing either.
• Firefox: Exclusively in the History and Booksmarks menus.
• Google Earth: Nothing.
• Cyberduck (FTP client): Exclusively in Boomark menu.
• Colloquy (IRC client): No icons.
• Photoshop Elements 4.0: A bunch of scattered icons, strangely mostly on standard-issue commands.

I think the pattern is pretty clear: No icons on menu items. All of the applications I checked are from 2008 or later, except Photoshop which is a 2006 version.

[verm]

Thanks, but honestly I don't care what other developers decided to do with their software. Apple has provided a nice document laying out what's proper and what's not. Once I decide what that is I'll post it here and it will be open for discussion.

The concept of "everyone else does it so we should" is a reasoning I refuse to accept in software. If everyone played follow the leader nothing new would happen.

I'm not willing to remove all the icons before any users have a chance to complain. If users start complaining en-mass then I'd be willing to remove them all, who knows maybe they'll like it a lot because it's unique. Until we try we'll never know.

Also as a side note, I said in my original description in this ticket, the icons are all turned on for development purposes only, expect to see the final result before milestone:2.2.0 which will be after I finish working on the menus and toolbars.

[nielsm]

Half of the applications I listed are from Apple and I would expect Apple's own interpretation of the HIG to be canon.

[TheFluff]

Menu icons on mac look kinda dumb, I'm just sayin'

[greg]

I have to agree that less menu icons are more, but this should be valid for all platforms. It's part of the GNOME HIG as well and a few weeks ago, GNOME decided to disable menu icons for default actions (Load/Save/Close etc.). I think it's now an established fact that cluttering the menus with icons does not help with usability; the icon's purpose is lost when it cannot emphasize a particular interesting item anymore.

[verm]

Yeah, I've already agreed that the Apple HIG does bring up a lot of good points. My plan is to make the menu icons look the same on all platforms in keeping with the comments I noted in the description.

I'll get around to it soon I hope in the next week or two I'll post what icons I think we should keep and which should be removed.

There was one thing I was thinking of doing, which was to put an icon on the menu if there is a button on a toolbar for it so users can visually link a button with it's corresponding menu option. This isn't important right now but I think it would be useful once I add cusomisable menus. I'm not stuck on the idea though.

[verm]

Bump 2.2.0 tickets to milestone:3.0.0 (2.2.0 is becoming 3.0.0)

[Plorkyeran]

As of r5554 icons are never shown in the menu on mac.