I am looking for a comprehensible icon/a visual metaphor to express "arbitrary attributes", in the sense of additional information.
In my particular case, each record represents a word, or a name, but the question is generally applicable for other cases - the additional attributes I am referring to provide some arbitrary additional information on the record; maybe it could be called "meta-information". To give an impression of what attributes I am talking about, here are some examples of that additional information are:
- Who created the record?
- How often is the record used?
- Is the record deprecated?
- In which century did the word/name stored in the record first occur?
- What other words (records) often appear in combination with this record?
etc.
So, to open the dialog box where the values of such attributes can be configured for a given record, I am looking for a commonly understood icon. My ideas so far, none of which I am completely happy with, are:
Tools
A set of tools is often used to convey "configuration", but that could be confused with the application-wide configuration that also exists in my program.
Luggage tag
A luggage tag could adequately convey the meaning of "attached information", but aside from said attributes, "markers" or "comments" can be attached to records, and I would like to use a luggage tag icon for those.
Information i
Such a symbol would express that we are dealing with information about the record, which is ok, but it also implies that it is read-only information, a mere information output, rather than a way to edit said information.
Is there any commonly understood visual way to express attribute values?
Edit...
, on a button? How much space is on the screen?