All, In the brave new world of Unicode and Universal Character Names everybody can write programs in their own language. The major problem for non-native readers is recognizing one set of squiggles as being the same as another (two uses of the same identifier). The paper: http://psych.utoronto.ca/~muter/Abs1985.htm suggests that for intermittent readers of unknown orthographies, ideographs have much lower error rates than alphabetic characters.
Does anybody have any experiences, or know of other related work? Should Japanese developers use Kana rather than Katakana (the phonetic alphabet), if only to make life easier for us westerners? There is some research showing faster access to semantics for Kana, although Katakana is quicker to speak. derek -- Derek M Jones tel: +44 (0) 1252 520 667 Knowledge Software Ltd mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Applications Standards Conformance Testing http://www.knosof.co.uk - Automatic footer for [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] unsubscribe discuss To join the announcements list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe announce To receive a help file, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] help This list is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/ If you have any problems or questions, please mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
