Laptop diary tool in REV - Glyphs

Judy Perry katheryn.swynford at gmail.com
Sun Jun 18 15:18:34 EDT 2006


Mark,

Did you ever see ToolBook's UI?  Something like 48 buttons on/near the
top-level of the interface with seemingly little to no organization
and many were not clear or were entirely too similar to other icons.

Judy

On 6/17/06, Mark Smith <mark at maseurope.net> wrote:
> And on a related note, and also not to denigrate anyones work, but
> one thing that still drives me round the bend is a row of icons
> without captions.
> Icons on their own, imho, are useful as visual aides-memoires to
> where something is once you already know what you're looking for, but
> simply confusing when you are unfamiliar with a particular app.
>
> One example is a truly horrible audio editing program I had to use
> once or twice, which had about 30 buttons with captionless icons in a
> column down one side of the window, if I remember correctly.  One of
> these buttons was for joining two sections of audio into one, and
> another for separating a section of audio into two.
>
> I still can't remember which was which, but one had a picture of a
> closed zip fastener with the zipper at the top, the other a picture
> of an open zip fastener with the zipper at the bottom. I had to
> either hover the mouse over one of them and wait for the tool-tip to
> appear, or just click one and undo if it turned out to be wrong. The
> simple inclusion of the captions "join" and "separate" would have
> saved me endless frustration and annoyance.
>
> They were nasty, crude icons, too. :)
>
> Tool-tips just don't cut it at all, as far as I'm concerned, though
> they can be useful for slightly more explanation than a caption,
> where necessary.
>
> Now I'm as keen on the GUI as anyone else, but it seems to me that
> this avoidance of text at all costs is all part of a general dumbing
> down, along with the use (previously discussed on this list) of the
> infantile "my" prefix for almost everything, like we're all tiny
> children playing with my little pony. Perhaps it's supposed to soften
> the terrifying intellectual strain of having to read words like
> 'computer', 'documents' etc.
>
> Bit of a rant, I know, but I feel better already .... thanks for
> listening :)
>
> Mark
>
> ps. You were lucky, I did all my work etching letters into basalt
> with my finger nails....
>
> On 17 Jun 2006, at 16:02, Richmond Mathewson wrote:
>
> > Aah!
> >
> > 1 thing worries me about Phenomenalog (and it is not Phenomenalog
> > specific):
> >
> > When I began programming computers most people wrote things by
> > hand; when I went to University people laughed at me because I did
> > my academic work on a typewriter (1982). No people do all sorts of
> > things using computers where they never even have to encounter text.
> >
> > Subsequently, the wierdos who use typewriters are not wierdos
> > because they are ahead of their time!
> >
> > Now (and I referred to the Symbol World website {http://
> > www.symbolworld.org/}) I see a move away from a literate populace
> > to one that communicates with Glyphs/Icons/Pictographs - and I find
> > this a bit worrying as it seems to be a step backwards - leading to
> > a paucity of expression (see section in Gulliver's Travels).
> >
> > Now I understand diaries to consist largely of subtle thoughts (or,
> > at least have the potential to contain them and all their
> > concommitant nuances of meaning) which cannot be adequately
> > communicated in pictorial symbols.
> >
> > This statement is not to be taken as a denigration of Bjerg's work
> > at all - it should empower a very large proportion of humanity who
> > have previously been disenfranchised by the computer revolution.
> >
> > sincerely, Richmond Mathewson
> >
> >
> > ____________________________________________________________
> >
> > "Philosophical problems are confusions arising owing to the
> > fluidity of meanings users attach to words and phrases."
> >                                        Mathewson, 2006
> > ____________________________________________________________
> >
> > ---------------------------------
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