The Noun Project has been really useful to me, especially for finding good icons with permissive licensing. I'm impressed at how well artists can express a conc

The Noun Project has been really useful to me, especially for finding good icons with permissive licensing. I'm impressed at how well artists can express a concept with a few lines! I've also thought about how to communicate actions, effectively making The Verb Project. Usually there's an input and output, sometimes storage or feedback loops too. Most of my basic shell scripts are written to convert data from one format to another. I made a standard icon format: a diagonally-divided icon with the input on the top left, and the output on the bottom right. For example, GPSToGalileo will take GPS coordinates as an input, generate a KML file, and open it with Galileo (Guru) offline maps. Or iMessageToCalendar. Or ClockBible. Or NotesToText. Having designed icons, I then put them as links on my (jailbroken) iPhone homescreen, to trigger these scripts. Having an auto-generator for icons could make some command-line tools much more accessible for non-technical users.