🚀 go-pugleaf

Sorry if you've seen this twice, but the Newsgroup line in the article I was
responding to started with an alt group, and the response I got on posting
from hydra (which doesn't carry alt groups) suggested that all the other groups
might have been ignored.

In article <1991Apr5.032157.10421@ecf.utoronto.ca> xiaoy@ecf.toronto.edu (XIAO  Yan) writes:
)In article <jpenny.670789735@s.ms.uky.edu> jpenny@ms.uky.edu (Jim Penny) writes:
)	(Lines deleted...)
)>I would like to see you assign an icon for the operation of
)>"compute the Delauney triangulation" or "apply duality map D"
)>or "compute the Symmetric difference" or ...
)>
)>The assertion is just plain silly, as it amounts to the assertion that
)>rebuses or pictograms are easier to understand than alphabetic languages.
)>There is at least two thousand years of history which points the other
)>way.
)
)	Ever learnt a language Called Chinese which doesn't use alphabetic
)	letters?
)

Let's get clear what we are talking about.  It seems to me some confusion
may have drifted into this conversation.

(Let me say at the outset that Yan's comment and its context only
precipitated this realization as a consequence of my own peculiar
psychology.  I am not directly addressing here what he confronts in his
remark.)

We seem to be talking about various interfaces and whether an iconic or
verbal approach best communicates the situation at hand, in general.  In
this discussion, this often seem to be equated with the question whether a
non-alphabetic or an alphabetic representation works best.  These are two
different things entirely. 

From the point of view of the first question, written English and Chinese
are on the same side of the fence, while from that of the second, they are
on opposite sides.

Both written English and written Chinese are transcriptions of a spoken
tongue, and come equipped with the syntax and grammar of the languages they
represent.  The majority of Chinese ideograms are quite abstract and it
would be difficult to reconstruct the meaning of most expressions even if
given the fundamental pictorial roots from which ideograms were derived,
especially in the absence of the grammatical and syntactic underpinnings of
spoken Chinese; certainly they are not likely candidates for use on
international road signs in the near future.  (What is the Chinese ideogram
for `restroom'.  And what am I doing in here with all these women, anyway?)
At the level of this discussion, the only basic difference between written
Chinese and written English is that English sorts things out by phonemes
(or at least tried to before the Great Vowel Shift) and Chinese sorts
things out word by word.  There is little difference between a radio button
labelled `Trees' and one labelled with the corresponding Chinese ideogram.
Similarly, there would be little difference between a verbal interface
using English and one using Chinese.  Possibly none at all for some of my
relatives.  Whether one reads faster in a language based on words as a unit
instead of phonemes has virtually nothing to do with how readily a verbal
interface, as opposed to an iconic interface, communicates functionality to
the user.

To the extent that a strictly iconic interface can `universally' convey
functionality, it must rely only on relationships that are `universally'
understood, and which are expressible in some compatible graphical form.
Of course, the smaller the universe the easier this is to accomplish, and
(within that smaller scope) the more powerful and transparent that
interface is.

Thus, for example, the Mac's interface embodies a grammar (a relatively
European grammar) which is simple enough for many people to pick up more or
less on the fly.  Its (or rather Xerox's) great insight was realizing that
most of the things one wants to do on a computer are quite ordinary, and
therefore essentially like something else with which we are already
familiar, such as, but not necessarily restricted to, actions we routinely
engage on at desktops, trashcans, filing cabinets, folders, etc.  (I would
prefer baseball myself.  It has everything the desktop does and a great
deal more on the side.  Pinch hitters, umpires, relief pitchers, foul balls,
stolen bases.  What a senior project.  We're talking real computer science
here.  Probably have to be multitasking, though.  Or soccer --- even more
universally accessible.  But both may be sexist.  Sexist?  Sex --- I can see
the ad campaign now.  How universal can you get?  But I digress....).  It is
primarily the relatively simple, transparent, and inflexible grammar of that
interface, and not whether it uses an icon for a floppy disk instead of the
set of characters "Floppy Disk", that makes it so accessible to many people,
and paradoxically, such a trial for people who prefer non-iconic interfaces.

While some of the latter folk might also complain that many icons are
obscure and non-intuitive, so what?  Why should we expect anything else?
Think of such icons as mnemonics, instead of as documentation in their own
right.  I admit that many purveyors of graphical interfaces are themselves
to blame for pushing the belief that icons are self-documenting.  But so
what if they aren't?  In WordPerfect, Alt-F3 means `Reveal Codes'.  This is
transparent?  Most of the icons on the Word for Windows ruler bar might as
well BE Chinese ideograms as far as I'm concerned, but once you know what
they do they serve as fairly effective reminders which require little
precious screen real estate.

I'm not actually a Word for Windows user* (though I've played one on TV).
My wife uses WfW in her work and I've indirectly become quite familiar with
it.  We have spent significant corporate funds on third party books
explicating the intricacies of WfW in order to penetrate the dense thickets
of its interface and persuade it to heel to professional requirements.
Once mastered, the iconic interface is quite nice to use.  But for the
novice, expecially the demanding novice, it can be just as intimidating as
the MSDOS prompt.

* I use TeX myself --- in case anyone gets the radical idea from reading
this that I think graphical interfaces are the greatest thing since sliced
bread.  I never did figure out on my own how to change the name of a Mac
icon.  Stupid, hunh?  I kept looking for something in the Menus.  Where is
that documented anyway?

)>
)>however, there are situations in which people have notorious difficulty
)>understanding information presented textually; qualitative information
])>is foremost amoung these.  Here a graphic display can be very helpful.
)>
)>Realize that people may be able to find pictures which they are
)>very accustomed to faster than they are able to read the corresponding
)>words in a box, but the words in a box approach is immensely more
)>flexible and is more robust when novel concepts must be communicated.
)>
)>Jim Penny
)
)	Damn right.  Now when I return home, I don't look up street name
) 	and number anymore.
)

Excuse my impartial ignorance, Yan, but what do you do instead?

 )-YX

-- 
Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.
				--
Charles Cleveland, School of Physics, Ga Tech, Atlanta, GA  30332-0430
uucp:  ...!gatech!prism!ph274cc    INTERNET:  ph274cc@prism.gatech.edu
Newsgroups: alt.hypertext,comp.cog-eng,comp.graphics,comp.multimedia,comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Images vs. Text
Summary: 
Expires: 
References: <1991Apr2.180348.19733@smsc.sony.com> <1991Apr02.235121.17834@convex.com> <jpenny.670789735@s.ms.uky.edu> <1991Apr5.032157.10421@ecf.utoronto.ca>
Sender: 
Followup-To: 
Distribution: na
Organization: School of Physics, Georgia Tech
Keywords: 

In article <1991Apr5.032157.10421@ecf.utoronto.ca> xiaoy@ecf.toronto.edu (XIAO  Yan) writes:
)In article <jpenny.670789735@s.ms.uky.edu> jpenny@ms.uky.edu (Jim Penny) writes:
)	(Lines deleted...)
)>I would like to see you assign an icon for the operation of
)>"compute the Delauney triangulation" or "apply duality map D"
)>or "compute the Symmetric difference" or ...
)>
)>The assertion is just plain silly, as it amounts to the assertion that
)>rebuses or pictograms are easier to understand than alphabetic languages.
)>There is at least two thousand years of history which points the other
)>way.
)
)	Ever learnt a language Called Chinese which doesn't use alphabetic
)	letters?
)

Let's get clear what we are talking about.  It seems to me some confusion
may have drifted into this conversation.

(Let me say at the outset that Yan's comment and its context only
precipitated this realization as a consequence of my own peculiar
psychology.  I am not directly addressing here what he confronts in his
remark.)

We seem to be talking about various interfaces and whether an iconic or
verbal approach best communicates the situation at hand, in general.  In
this discussion, this often seem to be equated with the question whether a
non-alphabetic or an alphabetic representation works best.  These are two
different things entirely. 

From the point of view of the first question, written English and Chinese
are on the same side of the fence, while from that of the second, they are
on opposite sides.

Both written English and written Chinese are transcriptions of a spoken
tongue, and come equipped with the syntax and grammar of the languages they
represent.  The majority of Chinese ideograms are quite abstract and it
would be difficult to reconstruct the meaning of most expressions even if
given the fundamental pictorial roots from which ideograms were derived,
especially in the absence of the grammatical and syntactic underpinnings of
spoken Chinese; certainly they are not likely candidates for use on
international road signs in the near future.  (What is the Chinese ideogram
for `restroom'.  And what am I doing in here with all these women, anyway?)
At the level of this discussion, the only basic difference between written
Chinese and written English is that English sorts things out by phonemes
(or at least tried to before the Great Vowel Shift) and Chinese sorts
things out word by word.  There is little difference between a radio button
labelled `Trees' and one labelled with the corresponding Chinese ideogram.
Similarly, there would be little difference between a verbal interface
using English and one using Chinese.  Possibly none at all for some of my
relatives.  Whether one reads faster in a language based on words as a unit
instead of phonemes has virtually nothing to do with how readily a verbal
interface, as opposed to an iconic interface, communicates functionality to
the user.

To the extent that a strictly iconic interface can `universally' convey
functionality, it must rely only on relationships that are `universally'
understood, and which are expressible in some compatible graphical form.
Of course, the smaller the universe the easier this is to accomplish, and
(within that smaller scope) the more powerful and transparent that
interface is.

Thus, for example, the Mac's interface embodies a grammar (a relatively
European grammar) which is simple enough for many people to pick up more or
less on the fly.  Its (or rather Xerox's) great insight was realizing that
most of the things one wants to do on a computer are quite ordinary, and
therefore essentially like something else with which we are already
familiar, such as, but not necessarily restricted to, actions we routinely
engage on at desktops, trashcans, filing cabinets, folders, etc.  (I would
prefer baseball myself.  It has everything the desktop does and a great
deal more on the side.  Pinch hitters, umpires, relief pitchers, foul balls,
stolen bases.  What a senior project.  We're talking real computer science
here.  Probably have to be multitasking, though.  Or soccer --- even more
universally accessible.  But both may be sexist.  Sexist?  Sex --- I can see
the ad campaign now.  How universal can you get?  But I digress....).  It is
primarily the relatively simple, transparent, and inflexible grammar of that
interface, and not whether it uses an icon for a floppy disk instead of the
set of characters "Floppy Disk", that makes it so accessible to many people,
and paradoxically, such a trial for people who prefer non-iconic interfaces.

While some of the latter folk might also complain that many icons are
obscure and non-intuitive, so what?  Why should we expect anything else?
Think of such icons as mnemonics, instead of as documentation in their own
right.  I admit that many purveyors of graphical interfaces are themselves
to blame for pushing the belief that icons are self-documenting.  But so
what if they aren't?  In WordPerfect, Alt-F3 means `Reveal Codes'.  This is
transparent?  Most of the icons on the Word for Windows ruler bar might as
well BE Chinese ideograms as far as I'm concerned, but once you know what
they do they serve as fairly effective reminders which require little
precious screen real estate.

I'm not actually a Word for Windows user* (though I've played one on TV).
My wife uses WfW in her work and I've indirectly become quite familiar with
it.  We have spent significant corporate funds on third party books
explicating the intricacies of WfW in order to penetrate the dense thickets
of its interface and persuade it to heel to professional requirements.
Once mastered, the iconic interface is quite nice to use.  But for the
novice, expecially the demanding novice, it can be just as intimidating as
the MSDOS prompt.

* I use TeX myself --- in case anyone gets the radical idea from reading
this that I think graphical interfaces are the greatest thing since sliced
bread.  I never did figure out on my own how to change the name of a Mac
icon.  Stupid, hunh?  I kept looking for something in the Menus.  Where is
that documented anyway?

)>
)>however, there are situations in which people have notorious difficulty
)>understanding information presented textually; qualitative information
])>is foremost amoung these.  Here a graphic display can be very helpful.
)>
)>Realize that people may be able to find pictures which they are
)>very accustomed to faster than they are able to read the corresponding
)>words in a box, but the words in a box approach is immensely more
)>flexible and is more robust when novel concepts must be communicated.
)>
)>Jim Penny
)
)	Damn right.  Now when I return home, I don't look up street name
) 	and number anymore.
)

Excuse my impartial ignorance, Yan, but what do you do instead?

 )-YX

-- 
Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.
				--
Charles Cleveland, School of Physics, Ga Tech, Atlanta, GA  30332-0430
uucp:  ...!gatech!prism!ph274cc    INTERNET:  ph274cc@prism.gatech.edu