Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> What, with only 16 possible colours available? ;-)

  Even 16 colors makes your life a LOT easier with file listings.

> Actually, I tend to work with files through a GUI instead. And I also 
> tend to not have very many of them. Distinguishing by icon is almost as 
> easy as by colour.

  I disagree. Icons are small and often hard to distinguish from each
other, and it's difficult to view at a glance what type of file is
being listed at a certain position. The icon is not any better than
the file extension itself. You may as well look for the file extension.
However, coloring makes it much easier to see the file types at a quick
glance, without having to focus on a specific icon or extension.

  In Windows in particular, the icon is actually worse than the file
extension. The icon does *not* represent the file type. It represents
the program which opens that file. This sometimes leads to completely
ridiculous situations where you have two files with the exact same
name (if extension have been disabled, as it's the default in Windows)
and exact same icon. If you are looking at the icon listing (rather
than the detailed listing) there's absolutely no way to visually
distinguish which file is which.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message