Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!bloom-beacon!adam.pika.mit.edu!scs
From: scs@adam.pika.mit.edu (Steve Summit)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Iconitis
Message-ID: <10428@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Date: 8 Apr 89 05:12:26 GMT
References: <754@oravax.UUCP> <225800146@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> <9937@smoke.BRL.MIL> <1930@dataio.Data-IO.COM> <10115@megaron.arizona.edu>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: scs@adam.pika.mit.edu (Steve Summit)
Lines: 29

In article <10115@megaron.arizona.edu> robert@arizona.edu (Robert J. Drabek) writes:
>In article <1930@dataio.Data-IO.COM>, bright@Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright) writes:
>> I've also seen a lot of effort expended to come up with an icon for 'Help'.
>> Those people got mad when I suggested the string 'Help' would do nicely.
>
>"Help" is just fine as long as you read English...

I knew someone was going to bring up the language issue.  For a
lot of these forced, icons-for-icon's-sake icons, the little
crypto-graphics are less comprehensible (and harder to look up in
an index) than simple words, whether they are in your language or
not.

On the back of a Microvax is a switch that controls whether the
console BREAK key will escape to the processor front-end (the >>>
hardware prompt).  The switch's two positions are, of course,
labeled with two little icons which are utterly incomprehensible
to any culture on the planet.  (Hey! equal opportunity...)
You tell me: does a triangle in a circle mean that the break key
is or isn't enabled?  I always have to re-determine the switch's
functionality, by trial-and-error, each time I try to use it.

As I recall, there's another, three-position switch on the back
of a Microvax, labeled with even stranger little symbols, which
controls whether the initial boot messages are printed in English
or in a country-dependent way...

                                            Steve Summit
                                            scs@adam.pika.mit.edu