Re: Universal iconic language - (was - Sanskrit as computer programming language)?

From: Mike Fahlbusch (mcf_at_cobn-o-s-p-a-mweb.com.au)
Date: 07/04/04 

Date: Sun, 04 Jul 2004 14:20:10 +0930

On Tue, 08 Jun 2004 04:50:45 GMT, "Harold Rabbie"
<hzrabbie@comcast.net> wrote:

>The proliferation of meaningless icons in GUIs has always frustrated me.
>Especially in some of the more sophisticated graphical editors, the need to
>come up with a unique bitmap image for each function button seems to have
>rapidly outgrown the imaginations of the GUI designers.

>In multilingual environments like Europe, this disease has even spread to
>consumer appliances such as washing machines and remote controls. In order
>to avoid having to label each function in eighteen languages, each European
>manufacturer has adopted its own idiosyncratic set of symbols, equally
>unintelligible to all.

>To solve this problem once and for all, I propose worldwide adoption of a
>set of universal icons that a) are mostly unambiguous, b) are already
>recognized and understood by billions of people, and c) have a well-defined
>Unicode representation. I refer of course to Chinese characters, which can
>visually represent concepts with a much higher information content per pixel
>than any representation based on alphabets such as Latin (or Sanskrit).

>Is there any chance that the Anglo-centric technology industry can be
>persuaded to adopt this or a similar idea?

We could adopt a symbol system like the one for electrical on/off
where a closed pipe (no flow) represents on, and an open pipe (flow)
represents off.

Firstly we would need to prove that there is such a thing as a
universally understood set of symbols.

Sig:
I have a brain the size of a planet. It's not much good to me, however. It's on a different planet.

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