And on a related note, and also not to denigrate anyones work, but
one thing that still drives me round the bend is a row of icons
without captions.
Icons on their own, imho, are useful as visual aides-memoires to
where something is once you already know what you're looking for, but
simply confusing when you are unfamiliar with a particular app.
One example is a truly horrible audio editing program I had to use
once or twice, which had about 30 buttons with captionless icons in a
column down one side of the window, if I remember correctly. One of
these buttons was for joining two sections of audio into one, and
another for separating a section of audio into two.
I still can't remember which was which, but one had a picture of a
closed zip fastener with the zipper at the top, the other a picture
of an open zip fastener with the zipper at the bottom. I had to
either hover the mouse over one of them and wait for the tool-tip to
appear, or just click one and undo if it turned out to be wrong. The
simple inclusion of the captions "join" and "separate" would have
saved me endless frustration and annoyance.
They were nasty, crude icons, too. :)
Tool-tips just don't cut it at all, as far as I'm concerned, though
they can be useful for slightly more explanation than a caption,
where necessary.
Now I'm as keen on the GUI as anyone else, but it seems to me that
this avoidance of text at all costs is all part of a general dumbing
down, along with the use (previously discussed on this list) of the
infantile "my" prefix for almost everything, like we're all tiny
children playing with my little pony. Perhaps it's supposed to soften
the terrifying intellectual strain of having to read words like
'computer', 'documents' etc.
Bit of a rant, I know, but I feel better already .... thanks for
listening :)
Mark
ps. You were lucky, I did all my work etching letters into basalt
with my finger nails....
On 17 Jun 2006, at 16:02, Richmond Mathewson wrote:
Aah!
1 thing worries me about Phenomenalog (and it is not Phenomenalog
specific):
When I began programming computers most people wrote things by
hand; when I went to University people laughed at me because I did
my academic work on a typewriter (1982). No people do all sorts of
things using computers where they never even have to encounter text.
Subsequently, the wierdos who use typewriters are not wierdos
because they are ahead of their time!
Now (and I referred to the Symbol World website {http://
www.symbolworld.org/}) I see a move away from a literate populace
to one that communicates with Glyphs/Icons/Pictographs - and I find
this a bit worrying as it seems to be a step backwards - leading to
a paucity of expression (see section in Gulliver's Travels).
Now I understand diaries to consist largely of subtle thoughts (or,
at least have the potential to contain them and all their
concommitant nuances of meaning) which cannot be adequately
communicated in pictorial symbols.
This statement is not to be taken as a denigration of Bjerg's work
at all - it should empower a very large proportion of humanity who
have previously been disenfranchised by the computer revolution.
sincerely, Richmond Mathewson
____________________________________________________________
"Philosophical problems are confusions arising owing to the
fluidity of meanings users attach to words and phrases."
Mathewson, 2006
____________________________________________________________
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