10 Sep
2007
10 Sep
'07
10:20 a.m.
On 10/09/2007, Rob <robert at irrelevant.com> wrote:
Long before my parents were born, or, I suspect, my grandparents, so
not terribly relevant now!
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
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On 10/09/2007, Liam Proven <lproven at
gmail.com> wrote:
That's true, but then, a simple old dot-matrix makes a more
distinctive pictogram than a laser, which tends to be a simple box.
But so long as people learn to associate the pictogram with its
meaning, it works, and it's international and does not require
literacy.
The symbols in Chinese no longer resemble the concepts behind them in
any recognisable way, but it is the single biggest single-language
nation on the planet. Their literally hundreds of dissimilar
mutually-unintelligible dialects and tongues are united by a single
written language, one which has no connection with the spoken forms,
which is based on pictograms.
It *works.*
But a little picture of a printer works
everywhere.
Only if you know what a printer is looks like. And I don't know about
you, but the "little picture of a printer" on, let's say, the Print
button in MS Word, looks absolutely nothing like any of the printers I
have here. Now *I* know that it looks like a big old impact printer,
with output coming from the top, but the vast majority of the general
public these days will never have seen such a beast! [...] No wonder mass-market PCs are produced with *colour
coded* connectors,
and mass-market peripherals are issued with matching coloured plugs...
That is a good plan, I must concede.
Unless, of course, you're colour-blind.
Stop being so
provincial!
Hey, we ruled half the world at one point...