Iconitis

[Steve Summit]

In article <10115 at megaron.arizona.edu> robert at arizona.edu (Robert J. Drabek) writes:
>In article <1930 at dataio.Data-IO.COM>, bright at 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 at adam.pika.mit.edu