Date: Sun, 14 Jul 1996 19:58:20 -0400 (EDT) From: Tim Vanderhoek <hoek@freenet.hamilton.on.ca> To: John Fieber <jfieber@indiana.edu> Cc: Sean Kelly <kelly@fsl.noaa.gov>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD keyboard Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.91.960714193820.6118A-100000@james.freenet.hamilton.on.ca> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.94.960714141640.1889B-100000@Fieber-John.campusview.indiana.edu>
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On Sun, 14 Jul 1996, John Fieber wrote: > white background! The shape and color of a stop sign represents > only a single word, but it would be a heck of a lot less > effective if it were only represented textually. > The same goes for icons I use for iconified applications on my X > desktop. A picture of an envelope means one thing (email), but I > can identify and get the mouse to it in an instant. It is much > slower without the image and requires linguistic brain effort. I realize you know what you are talking about, but I have to ask if you have ever seen any specific research proving this. (time passes while I ask :). In the case of a road sign--a road sign is something you almost always see indirectly. You're always trying to drive at the same time, and even if you're not, the road sign is still going to be unexpected in that it is always one road sign, instead of one road sign in a pool of a thousand road signs. I'm not sure it can be compared to seeing an icon. An icon will usually be amidst many other icons. When searching for an icon, one is specifically looking for a specific icon--something not often the case with a road sign. I know, when reading a sheet of paper, or a computer screen, if my name is written on it somewhere, it almost always pops out immediately with little more than a glance at the paper or screen. When looking for a specific word or word sequence in a large text file, if you scroll it up a screen and pay attention the whole time, I'll bet you find it first time even if the text is being scrolled 5-10 times to fast to be read normally. I think that text can be recognized very quickly. I'm sure that, over time, the same would be true for graphic icons. However, unless there is a large advantage in recognition time for an icon (which I don't think there is), there are other advantages that make text-based names better. Words, letters, are more precise than graphics. Obviously, they're more universal in that the blind can use them. While, with time, I think it would be possible for research to create regexps that match graphical icons, and create icons that clearly match their meaning, I don't think icons will ever have the breadth of possible meaning that a textual name does. I'm not contending the usefulness and friendliness of a GUI; rather, I'm suggesting that an icon can simply not replace the name of a command, for example, `rm', `cp', `find', `ls', etc.. -- Outnumbered? Maybe. Outspoken? Never! tIM...HOEk
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