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From: xiaoy@ecf.toronto.edu (XIAO  Yan)
Subject: Re: Images vs. Text
Message-ID: <1991Apr5.032157.10421@ecf.utoronto.ca>
Sender: news@ecf.utoronto.ca (News Administrator)
Organization: University of Toronto, Engineering Computing Facility
References: <1991Apr2.180348.19733@smsc.sony.com> <1991Apr02.235121.17834@convex.com> <jpenny.670789735@s.ms.uky.edu>
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Date: Fri, 5 Apr 91 03:21:57 GMT

In article <jpenny.670789735@s.ms.uky.edu> 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?

>
>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.

-YX