Edit: Was gonna say they were hard to read. Nevermind, I see the post now explaining that they will be used with the macro palette later on, and are not intended to be used in the list format.
Would be nice to see them be used in the list format with larger icons somehow. I would assume it might take a while to get used to associating the icons with the spells. Even with the nifty explanation in the other topic.
Starting to visualize how they will look in the macro palette... once a person would get used to the icons, I can see them being a lot better than text.
If the icons were to be used in place of text, would weapon skills and job abilities be getting new icons as well? I saw that 2-Hour abilities have new icons.
Of course, this is just my assumption that the icons can or will be used to replace the text in the macro palette.