Xref: utzoo comp.cog-eng:1931 comp.graphics:17090 comp.multimedia:294 comp.software-eng:5277 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!mcnc!gatech!prism!ph274cc From: ph274cc@prism.gatech.EDU (Charles Cleveland) Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng,comp.graphics,comp.multimedia,comp.software-eng Subject: Re: Images vs. Text Message-ID: <25715@hydra.gatech.EDU> Date: 6 Apr 91 16:24:43 GMT References: <1991Apr2.180348.19733@smsc.sony.com> <1991Apr02.235121.17834@convex.com> <1991Apr5.032157.10421@ecf.utoronto.ca> Followup-To: comp.cog-eng Distribution: na Organization: School of Physics, Georgia Tech Lines: 278 Sorry if you've seen this twice, but the Newsgroup line in the article I was responding to started with an alt group, and the response I got on posting from hydra (which doesn't carry alt groups) suggested that all the other groups might have been ignored. In article <1991Apr5.032157.10421@ecf.utoronto.ca> xiaoy@ecf.toronto.edu (XIAO Yan) writes: )In article jpenny@ms.uky.edu (Jim Penny) writes: ) (Lines deleted...) )>I would like to see you assign an icon for the operation of )>"compute the Delauney triangulation" or "apply duality map D" )>or "compute the Symmetric difference" or ... )> )>The assertion is just plain silly, as it amounts to the assertion that )>rebuses or pictograms are easier to understand than alphabetic languages. )>There is at least two thousand years of history which points the other )>way. ) ) Ever learnt a language Called Chinese which doesn't use alphabetic ) letters? ) Let's get clear what we are talking about. It seems to me some confusion may have drifted into this conversation. (Let me say at the outset that Yan's comment and its context only precipitated this realization as a consequence of my own peculiar psychology. I am not directly addressing here what he confronts in his remark.) We seem to be talking about various interfaces and whether an iconic or verbal approach best communicates the situation at hand, in general. In this discussion, this often seem to be equated with the question whether a non-alphabetic or an alphabetic representation works best. These are two different things entirely. From the point of view of the first question, written English and Chinese are on the same side of the fence, while from that of the second, they are on opposite sides. Both written English and written Chinese are transcriptions of a spoken tongue, and come equipped with the syntax and grammar of the languages they represent. The majority of Chinese ideograms are quite abstract and it would be difficult to reconstruct the meaning of most expressions even if given the fundamental pictorial roots from which ideograms were derived, especially in the absence of the grammatical and syntactic underpinnings of spoken Chinese; certainly they are not likely candidates for use on international road signs in the near future. (What is the Chinese ideogram for `restroom'. And what am I doing in here with all these women, anyway?) At the level of this discussion, the only basic difference between written Chinese and written English is that English sorts things out by phonemes (or at least tried to before the Great Vowel Shift) and Chinese sorts things out word by word. There is little difference between a radio button labelled `Trees' and one labelled with the corresponding Chinese ideogram. Similarly, there would be little difference between a verbal interface using English and one using Chinese. Possibly none at all for some of my relatives. Whether one reads faster in a language based on words as a unit instead of phonemes has virtually nothing to do with how readily a verbal interface, as opposed to an iconic interface, communicates functionality to the user. To the extent that a strictly iconic interface can `universally' convey functionality, it must rely only on relationships that are `universally' understood, and which are expressible in some compatible graphical form. Of course, the smaller the universe the easier this is to accomplish, and (within that smaller scope) the more powerful and transparent that interface is. Thus, for example, the Mac's interface embodies a grammar (a relatively European grammar) which is simple enough for many people to pick up more or less on the fly. Its (or rather Xerox's) great insight was realizing that most of the things one wants to do on a computer are quite ordinary, and therefore essentially like something else with which we are already familiar, such as, but not necessarily restricted to, actions we routinely engage on at desktops, trashcans, filing cabinets, folders, etc. (I would prefer baseball myself. It has everything the desktop does and a great deal more on the side. Pinch hitters, umpires, relief pitchers, foul balls, stolen bases. What a senior project. We're talking real computer science here. Probably have to be multitasking, though. Or soccer --- even more universally accessible. But both may be sexist. Sexist? Sex --- I can see the ad campaign now. How universal can you get? But I digress....). It is primarily the relatively simple, transparent, and inflexible grammar of that interface, and not whether it uses an icon for a floppy disk instead of the set of characters "Floppy Disk", that makes it so accessible to many people, and paradoxically, such a trial for people who prefer non-iconic interfaces. While some of the latter folk might also complain that many icons are obscure and non-intuitive, so what? Why should we expect anything else? Think of such icons as mnemonics, instead of as documentation in their own right. I admit that many purveyors of graphical interfaces are themselves to blame for pushing the belief that icons are self-documenting. But so what if they aren't? In WordPerfect, Alt-F3 means `Reveal Codes'. This is transparent? Most of the icons on the Word for Windows ruler bar might as well BE Chinese ideograms as far as I'm concerned, but once you know what they do they serve as fairly effective reminders which require little precious screen real estate. I'm not actually a Word for Windows user* (though I've played one on TV). My wife uses WfW in her work and I've indirectly become quite familiar with it. We have spent significant corporate funds on third party books explicating the intricacies of WfW in order to penetrate the dense thickets of its interface and persuade it to heel to professional requirements. Once mastered, the iconic interface is quite nice to use. But for the novice, expecially the demanding novice, it can be just as intimidating as the MSDOS prompt. * I use TeX myself --- in case anyone gets the radical idea from reading this that I think graphical interfaces are the greatest thing since sliced bread. I never did figure out on my own how to change the name of a Mac icon. Stupid, hunh? I kept looking for something in the Menus. Where is that documented anyway? )> )>however, there are situations in which people have notorious difficulty )>understanding information presented textually; qualitative information ])>is foremost amoung these. Here a graphic display can be very helpful. )> )>Realize that people may be able to find pictures which they are )>very accustomed to faster than they are able to read the corresponding )>words in a box, but the words in a box approach is immensely more )>flexible and is more robust when novel concepts must be communicated. )> )>Jim Penny ) ) Damn right. Now when I return home, I don't look up street name ) and number anymore. ) Excuse my impartial ignorance, Yan, but what do you do instead? )-YX -- Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code. -- Charles Cleveland, School of Physics, Ga Tech, Atlanta, GA 30332-0430 uucp: ...!gatech!prism!ph274cc INTERNET: ph274cc@prism.gatech.edu Newsgroups: alt.hypertext,comp.cog-eng,comp.graphics,comp.multimedia,comp.software-eng Subject: Re: Images vs. Text Summary: Expires: References: <1991Apr2.180348.19733@smsc.sony.com> <1991Apr02.235121.17834@convex.com> <1991Apr5.032157.10421@ecf.utoronto.ca> Sender: Followup-To: Distribution: na Organization: School of Physics, Georgia Tech Keywords: In article <1991Apr5.032157.10421@ecf.utoronto.ca> xiaoy@ecf.toronto.edu (XIAO Yan) writes: )In article jpenny@ms.uky.edu (Jim Penny) writes: ) (Lines deleted...) )>I would like to see you assign an icon for the operation of )>"compute the Delauney triangulation" or "apply duality map D" )>or "compute the Symmetric difference" or ... )> )>The assertion is just plain silly, as it amounts to the assertion that )>rebuses or pictograms are easier to understand than alphabetic languages. )>There is at least two thousand years of history which points the other )>way. ) ) Ever learnt a language Called Chinese which doesn't use alphabetic ) letters? ) Let's get clear what we are talking about. It seems to me some confusion may have drifted into this conversation. (Let me say at the outset that Yan's comment and its context only precipitated this realization as a consequence of my own peculiar psychology. I am not directly addressing here what he confronts in his remark.) We seem to be talking about various interfaces and whether an iconic or verbal approach best communicates the situation at hand, in general. In this discussion, this often seem to be equated with the question whether a non-alphabetic or an alphabetic representation works best. These are two different things entirely. From the point of view of the first question, written English and Chinese are on the same side of the fence, while from that of the second, they are on opposite sides. Both written English and written Chinese are transcriptions of a spoken tongue, and come equipped with the syntax and grammar of the languages they represent. The majority of Chinese ideograms are quite abstract and it would be difficult to reconstruct the meaning of most expressions even if given the fundamental pictorial roots from which ideograms were derived, especially in the absence of the grammatical and syntactic underpinnings of spoken Chinese; certainly they are not likely candidates for use on international road signs in the near future. (What is the Chinese ideogram for `restroom'. And what am I doing in here with all these women, anyway?) At the level of this discussion, the only basic difference between written Chinese and written English is that English sorts things out by phonemes (or at least tried to before the Great Vowel Shift) and Chinese sorts things out word by word. There is little difference between a radio button labelled `Trees' and one labelled with the corresponding Chinese ideogram. Similarly, there would be little difference between a verbal interface using English and one using Chinese. Possibly none at all for some of my relatives. Whether one reads faster in a language based on words as a unit instead of phonemes has virtually nothing to do with how readily a verbal interface, as opposed to an iconic interface, communicates functionality to the user. To the extent that a strictly iconic interface can `universally' convey functionality, it must rely only on relationships that are `universally' understood, and which are expressible in some compatible graphical form. Of course, the smaller the universe the easier this is to accomplish, and (within that smaller scope) the more powerful and transparent that interface is. Thus, for example, the Mac's interface embodies a grammar (a relatively European grammar) which is simple enough for many people to pick up more or less on the fly. Its (or rather Xerox's) great insight was realizing that most of the things one wants to do on a computer are quite ordinary, and therefore essentially like something else with which we are already familiar, such as, but not necessarily restricted to, actions we routinely engage on at desktops, trashcans, filing cabinets, folders, etc. (I would prefer baseball myself. It has everything the desktop does and a great deal more on the side. Pinch hitters, umpires, relief pitchers, foul balls, stolen bases. What a senior project. We're talking real computer science here. Probably have to be multitasking, though. Or soccer --- even more universally accessible. But both may be sexist. Sexist? Sex --- I can see the ad campaign now. How universal can you get? But I digress....). It is primarily the relatively simple, transparent, and inflexible grammar of that interface, and not whether it uses an icon for a floppy disk instead of the set of characters "Floppy Disk", that makes it so accessible to many people, and paradoxically, such a trial for people who prefer non-iconic interfaces. While some of the latter folk might also complain that many icons are obscure and non-intuitive, so what? Why should we expect anything else? Think of such icons as mnemonics, instead of as documentation in their own right. I admit that many purveyors of graphical interfaces are themselves to blame for pushing the belief that icons are self-documenting. But so what if they aren't? In WordPerfect, Alt-F3 means `Reveal Codes'. This is transparent? Most of the icons on the Word for Windows ruler bar might as well BE Chinese ideograms as far as I'm concerned, but once you know what they do they serve as fairly effective reminders which require little precious screen real estate. I'm not actually a Word for Windows user* (though I've played one on TV). My wife uses WfW in her work and I've indirectly become quite familiar with it. We have spent significant corporate funds on third party books explicating the intricacies of WfW in order to penetrate the dense thickets of its interface and persuade it to heel to professional requirements. Once mastered, the iconic interface is quite nice to use. But for the novice, expecially the demanding novice, it can be just as intimidating as the MSDOS prompt. * I use TeX myself --- in case anyone gets the radical idea from reading this that I think graphical interfaces are the greatest thing since sliced bread. I never did figure out on my own how to change the name of a Mac icon. Stupid, hunh? I kept looking for something in the Menus. Where is that documented anyway? )> )>however, there are situations in which people have notorious difficulty )>understanding information presented textually; qualitative information ])>is foremost amoung these. Here a graphic display can be very helpful. )> )>Realize that people may be able to find pictures which they are )>very accustomed to faster than they are able to read the corresponding )>words in a box, but the words in a box approach is immensely more )>flexible and is more robust when novel concepts must be communicated. )> )>Jim Penny ) ) Damn right. Now when I return home, I don't look up street name ) and number anymore. ) Excuse my impartial ignorance, Yan, but what do you do instead? )-YX -- Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code. -- Charles Cleveland, School of Physics, Ga Tech, Atlanta, GA 30332-0430 uucp: ...!gatech!prism!ph274cc INTERNET: ph274cc@prism.gatech.edu