[LINK] Are GUI design standards no longer relevanr?

[David Boxall]

On 19/01/2010 9:36 AM, Fernando Cassia wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 7:28 PM,<grove at zeta.org.au>  wrote:
>> On Mon, 18 Jan 2010, Ivan Trundle wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On 18/01/2010, at 9:22 PM, David Lochrin wrote:
>>>
>>>> Words are best.  This is why civilisation evolved written language from pictographs.
>>>
>>> Words are best? I love such generalisations, especially since I've spent most of my working life as an editor...
>>
>> Imagine a culture who had never seen or heard of a bow and arrow,
>> or tipped spear.
>>
>> Then present them with this symbol:
>>
>>
>>               ->
>
> I see a nose. Or a breast. Or... hrmmm...
> ...
Over the festive season, a relative and I were puzzling over the reasons 
for the dominance of English, given that Chinese (in one form or 
another) is the first spoken language of far more people.

One factor, we decided, is the complexity of the written form. 
Pictographic writing has a virtual infinity of symbols (the largest 
Chinese dictionaries include about 56,000 characters, but the system is 
open-ended: there is no upper limit to the number of characters). With 
all its faults, an alphabet is easier to learn and use than a multitude 
of graphics.

-- 
David Boxall                    |  The more that wise people learn
                                 |  The more they come to appreciate
http://david.boxall.id.au       |  How much they don't know.
                                                         --Confucius