The terms select and highlight are generally used interchangeably.
However, they're not exactly the same thing. For instance.
When you are arrowing down through a list of files, each time you
move your cursor to the next file in the list, it is now
highlighted. You can use the copy command, and it will take the
currently highlighted file. This is very handy, and how I accomplish
most of my copy and paste operations. However, this is not
considered selecting, because you didn't specifically tell the
computer to select this file. If you're in text edit, and you select
a line or two of text, it becomes highlighted, to let sighted folks
know it is selected. This is where the interchangeability comes in,
since it is selected it is highlighted, but you didn't highlight it,
you selected it. You can of course do cut/copy/paste operations with
this selected text as well, but strictly speaking, they're not the
same thing, though simantically they're often used as equal
meanings. For normal everyday conversation/discussion, the
distinction isn't worth making, but when speaking in technical terms,
it *does* make a difference.
It's possible to have stuff highlighted w/o it being selected and
vice versa, but generally this isn't the case, and so terms are used
as meaning the same thing regardless of actual actions being performed.
(are you cnfused yet?)
Keep it simple, just use wichever one you like, and don't worry about
it. 99% of the time, it will mean the same thing, and if you know
what you're doing, in the last 1% of the time you'll know which it
is, and it won't make any difference there either. It's only when
you're completely unfamilar with the program/environment in question
where such interchangability becomes confusing.
On Mar 5, 2006, at 7:19 PM, David Csercsics wrote:
Quoted stuff:
Maybe this doesn't matter, but are selecting and highlighting
synonymous? I wondered because vo uses both so I assumed they were
somehow different.
I have always assumed that they were synonyms and it hasn't seemed
to have any effect. It's confusing though I think. I think the term
highlight refers to the fact that the item looks different visually
when it is selected. But conceptually what you're doing is
selecting the
item. I think they should pick one or the other and use it
consistently
or put a note somewhere that says that these words mean the same thing
so we don't get it Cmuddled.
