[OT] "The Condescending UI" (was: Do we need Win95/98/Me support?)

[Walter Bright]

On 1/23/2012 2:22 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> Although I disagree with phonetic being *necessarily* better than
> ideographic. I do agree with the benefits of phonetic you describe -
> essentially "easier to learn". But the benefit of ideographic is that they
> can be quicker and easier to use *after* you've learned them.

I find that very difficult to believe. But I don't know Kanji.


> Children and non-native speakers are taught the phonetic alphabets first
> (hiragana and katakana), because they're easier to learn and can handle any
> word with a small number of simple symbols. Then learners move on to the
> ideographic ones (the Chinese kanji). I only ever learned a few kanji, but
> you notice pretty quickly that once you've learned a kanji you can read it
> much more quickly than the phonetic equivalent. (It also helps your brain
> divide a sentence into words, since Japanese doesn't use spaces, but that's
> not really relevent here).

I've seen the same books written in both Kanji and English. The English ones 
were smaller, significantly so. I suspect the problem was the Kanji font had to 
be considerably larger in order to be legible, which negated any compression 
advantage it might have.


> I think a big part of the reason kanji is easier to read (once you've
> learned it) is that your eyes don't have to move nearly as much, and there's
> much more visual distinction between words (since there's so many more basic
> patterns). The fact that they originate from images is irrelevant since they
> don't really retain much of the resemblance they once did (a few of them do,
> like "mountain" or "gate", but only if you already know how to "see" it -
> like being told the "box of kleenex" is a printer). It really is exactly the
> same as reading "42" instead of "fourty-two". Or the standard VCR-control
> icons instead of "fast-forward", "next chapter", etc. Totally obscure if you
> don't already know them, but much quicker and easier to read then the
> english words if you do.
>
> As far as ability to look things up: Other ideographic languages may be
> different than this (and this certainly doesn't apply to computer icons
> either), but most of the Japanese kanji (ie, Chinese characters) are
> constructed from a smaller number of common building blocks, the "radicals"
> (around 100ish-or-so, IIRC?). As such, there actually is such thing as kanji
> dictionaries where you can look up an unknown symbol. (I almost bought one
> once...)
>
> Getting back to software, I like the words when I'm learning a program
> (whether they're tooltips or labels) since the icons are initially
> meaningless. But once I learn what the icon means, I often prefer to not
> have the words because, compared to the icons, they're just indistinct
> visual clutter (and they take up that much more screen real estate). The
> color in icons also adds yet another dimension for your eyes to lock onto
> which text labels just don't offer, at least not as naturally.

I agree that color can help, but it helps just as well with text. That's why we 
have color syntax highlighting editors.


> Another thing to note: While the connection between an icon and it's meaning
> may not (ever) be close enough to initially teach you what it does, the
> metaphor (even for non-physical things) is usually close enough, or logical
> enough in its own way, to help you *remember* what it does after you've
> initially learned it.

I still can't remember which of | and O means "on" and "off". Ever since the 
industry helpfully stopped labeling switches with "on" and "off" my usual 
technique is to flip it back and forth until it goes on. Is it really progress 
to change from a system where 99% of the world knows what it means to one where 
2% know? I suspect it is driven by some people who feel guilty about knowing 
english, or something like that.

I remember in the 1970's when the europeans decided to standardize on a traffic 
"stop" sign. They bikeshedded so much over this, the compromise selected was the 
american octagonal STOP sign. Nationalistic egos prevented selecting one from a 
european country.

Bring up Adobe's pdf viewer. It has a whole row of icons across the top. I defy 
you to tell me what they do without hovering over each. Nobody has ever figured 
out a picture that intuitively means "save", "send" or "print". Some icons do 
have meaningful pictures, like scroll arrows. But the rest is an awful stretch 
that is driven by some ideology <shatner>must --- make --- icon</shatner> rather 
than practicality.

Back to Thunderbird email. The icon for "Spell" is ABC over a check mark. That 
is not smaller or more intuitive than "Spell".