[comp.edu] Re^2: What to know & universal icons

lishka@uwslh.UUCP (a.k.a. Fish-Guts) (09/04/89)

craig@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Craig Hubley) writes:
>Well, it does exist and it's called Chinese.  Yes, I know it's been said
>before, but I for one would be *very glad* to learn Chinese characters, which
>in fact only has to be done once per lifetime, than learn a dozen stupid icons
>every time I fire up a new Mac, Sun, or NeXT application.  The fact is, it's
>*easier* to learn Chinese than do this again, over and over, dozens of times.

     However, the point of the original discussion (as I understood
it) was to find icons that are easy to understand for those other than
computer users.  I like your idea of using Chinese/Japanese characters
(also known as pictograms).  Unfortunately, although these pictograms
started out as iconic representations which closely resembled real
objects and actions, their forms have been altered over the years so
that the pictograms now only vaguely resemble the originals.  These
days, most non-computer-users would probably have a hard time
identifying an action/object from an unknown Chinese/Japanese
character.

     Another problem (which you pointed out) is the different meanings
that characters can have (even within the *same* language).  One
character sometimes (usually?) has more than one meaning; if you see
the character on the screen, which meaning does it represent?  It is
obvious that if this is going to work, some "standard" (oh no, not
another one!) will have to be drafted describing which characters to
use and the single meaning they would have if used as a computer icon. 

     I really like your idea.  Having spoken fluent Japanese when I
was young (which I have subsequently forgotten), I would welcome this
approach to icons; hell, now that you have spoken out, I may convert
my icons to characters instead.  However, characters used as icons
will not help non-computer-users, and this is something that concerns
me very much.  One of the attractions of the Macintosh was that it had
icons which were fairly easy to learn and recognize.  This allowed a
lot more people to start out with it, because it was not intimidating.
However, at least for non-Chinese/Japanese, using characters as icons
would remove that "ease-of-use" and would result in another level of
cryptic information that has to be learned, possibly resulting in more
people being turned off.  This is a huge drawback, in my eyes.

>    Craig Hubley			-------------------------------------

-- 
Christopher Lishka                 ...!{rutgers|ucbvax|...}!uwvax!uwslh!lishka
Wisconsin State Lab of Hygiene                   lishka%uwslh.uucp@cs.wisc.edu
Data Processing Section  (608)262-4485                       lishka@uwslh.uucp

"What a waste it is to lose one's mind -- or not to have a mind at all.
How true that is." -- V.P. Dan Quayle, garbling the United Negro College
Fund slogan in an address to the group (from Newsweek, May 22nd, 1989)

efrethei@blackbird.afit.af.mil (Erik J. Fretheim) (09/05/89)

Since Chinese and Japanese have been quashed as the computer ideogramatic
language of choice why not drift back several thousand years to the mid-east.
There were a couple of languages there which might be of service, and being 
dead languages they won't have the disadvantage of changing just as you get to 
know them.  

--
erik