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From: tainter@cbnewsd.ATT.COM (johnathan.tainter)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,sci.edu,comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: What to know & universal icons
Message-ID: <1359@cbnewsd.ATT.COM>
Date: 24 Aug 89 16:42:45 GMT
References: <19238@mimsy.UUCP>
Reply-To: tainter@cbnewsd.ATT.COM (johnathan.tainter,ih,)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 53

In article <19238@mimsy.UUCP> don@brillig.umd.edu.UUCP (Don Hopkins) writes:
>Arrows as icons for directions:
>Icon 0, left:		>Icon 1, right:

          or back:		or forward:

>	  *		>	     *
>	 **		>	     **
>	********	>	********
>	 **		>	     **
>	  *		>	     *

>Icon 2, up or forward:	>Icon 3, down or back:
>	  *		>	  *
>	 ***		>	  *
>	*****		>	  *
>	  *		>	*****
>	  *		>	 ***
>	  *		>	  *


They all look equally ambiguous to me.

>So what *is* is about arrows that make them seem to indicate
>direction?

Convention.  Probably rooted in early cultural training that one points
an arrow at (approximately) what one is hunting rather than some other
direction.  The rest is map related.  A person reading a map
probably has it layed out relative to the ground so up on the map is
forward, left is left, etc. (regardless of ESWN)

>For some reason, arrows just don't seem elemental enough to be
>universal icons for direction.  How about a very thin long rectangle
>as an icon for a 1-dimensional line segment, and a small circle as an
>icon for a dimensionless point?

All of these things are symbols.  Symbols get there values by convention.
Many are abstractions of other symbols (i.e. drawn arrow as symbol for
direction as abstraction from hunting arrow as symbol for direction)

I don't think you are going to find many preexisting 'universal' icons
because most foreign countries have all the symbol referents wrong. :-) :-)
In fact, many parts of the USL(*) get these wrong.

Your only hope is to start a campaign like the international road signs thingy.

>	-Don

--johnathan.a.tainter--
   att!ihlpb!tainter

(*) United States of Litigation, formerly the USA