From: John Hudson (tiro@tiro.com)
Date: Mon Aug 29 2005 - 11:30:37 CDT
Peter Kirk wrote:
> I see the point. But it takes significantly more processing, especially
> for a second language speaker of English etc, to understand something
> like the near-tautology "To pause the tape, press the PAUSE button" and
> then to find out which button is actually the PAUSE button (which may
> require consulting a non-plain text picture of the device), than it does
> to understand "To pause the tape, press the ❚❚ button".
Yes, but by the same token, it is desirable, or even necessary, in a software manual to
show a graphic of the toolbar icon for a particular function. These are also user
interface symbols, but I think most people would want to avoid encoding every software
toolbar icon in existence in Unicode. So what makes the VCR/CD user interface symbols more
likely candidates for encoding? Presumably the fact that they are used so widely and are
standardised among manufacturers. But some software UI icons also seem to have become
standardised, e.g. the little floppy icon for 'Save' or the little printer icon for
'Print'. Should these be encoded?
John Hudson
-- Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC tiro@tiro.com Currently reading: Lords of the horizons, by Jason Goodwin Dining on stone, by Iain Sinclair
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Aug 29 2005 - 11:35:02 CDT