On Sun, Apr 3, 2011 at 15:29, nick rundy
<nrundy@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I always thought of the minimize button icon as an underscore, minus, or dash. That is, representing the absence/omission of the window. Not that it signals the window is being moved to the bottom panel.
absense of the window is represented by "close".
The feature minimization stands for is called "iconification", and it's not far fetched to associate that with e.g. the icons in the Unity launcher.
otoh, minimization can be any form of semantic scaling of a content item, e.g. preview, thumb etc..
so in that respect, i find it reasonable to indicate a direction of movement, rather than using an abstract symbol such as "-" or a dot.