Action button labels, again

[Saber]

It is broken, why not fix it?

is it really broken?

yes

...Is there any real legal reason we can't match the standard for ABXY?

Nintendo or Microsoft's legal departments could answer that but I'd rather we not ask the question by using one of their schemes in the first place. I also don't want NSEW for the action buttons, unless the Pyra will play double duty as a compass. 

 

[_wb_]

It is broken, why not fix it?

is it really broken?

yes

How? if you are talking about the Pandora/GP2X style layout, sure it's not ideal if you are used to XBOX/Dreamcast style. Personally I have no issues switching between controllers styles.


A minor issue of remembering were some keys are doesn't mean we need Greek lettering, funny chevrons or Navigational directions. Is there any real legal reason we can't match the standard for ABXY?

I doubt it (if you could copyright the order of 4 letters, then someone could just as well own the copyright on QWERTY and charge every keyboard company in the world).

The point is: which standard would you match?

And you may consider it a "minor issue" to remember which of those "game buttons" is (Left) Ctrl, (Right) Ctrl, (Left) Alt, (Right) Alt, (Right) Shift, (Right) Meta, Home, End, PgUp, PgDn, Ins and Del (or at least that's what they do in most layout proposals), but I don't think that is a minor issue at all. Those are 12 pretty important keyboard keys that are in completely nonstandard positions, and if they don't get properly labeled, I think we're crippling the keyboard.

In my opinion, labeling the "game buttons" only with L1/L2/R1/R2/START/SELECT/A/B/X/Y/I/II would be worse than labeling the ASDF row of the keyboard with something non-useful (say, "12345678 square circle", even if those keys actually produce "asdfghjkl"), because at least the ASDF row is in a standard position so if you do a lot of keyboard typing, you already know where those letters are, even if they're not labeled (still, I strongly recommend to label the ASDF row correctly!). By contrast, there is no way to know, a priori, what keyboard keys those shoulder buttons and action buttons are supposed to map to, because normal keyboard don't have shoulder buttons and action button clusters.

And no, explaining things in a manual or on a default wallpaper is not good enough.

 

[rygD]

It is broken, why not fix it?

is it really broken?

yes

How? if you are talking about the Pandora/GP2X style layout, sure it's not ideal if you are used to XBOX/Dreamcast style. Personally I have no issues switching between controllers styles.
A minor issue of remembering were some keys are doesn't mean we need Greek lettering, funny chevrons or Navigational directions. Is there any real legal reason we can't match the standard for ABXY?

Maybe I am wrong, but putting information that is inaccurate most of the time on something to tell what it does seems broken to me.  Labeling a bottle of water "building material" is correct sometimes, but most of the time it is wrong.  Label it for what it is or does most of the time.  Using keyboard functions as the labels for the gaming buttons does this.

The only time the Pandora markings are correct are when they are used for software that internally identifies them as that to the user.

You may not have read my previous posts, but I propose we get rid of gaming style markings on the buttons since they will nearly always be incorrect.  Even if you go with one of the more popular layouts, it is incorrect a lot of the time (whenever you are not playing a game in an emulator with one of those layouts with keybindings that match the game or console defaults).  It helps all users to go with what has the best chances of being correct in most scenarios.  Marking things for what they don't do helps almost no one, and makes it "broken" for many.

 

[WizardStan]

I doubt it (if you could copyright the order of 4 letters, then someone could just as well own the copyright on QWERTY and charge every keyboard company in the world).

As I understand, it's trademark, not copyright, a completely different kettle of fish.

 

[comradekingu]

Depends what you mean by gaming style. 87-key is not stylish in terms of buttoncluster. Also 87-key functionality is advanced, and a secondary use. Alluding to it, with something that looks like gaming buttons, without being wrong for either purpose, seems to be the best compromise to me.

 

[rygD]

Depends what you mean by gaming style. 87-key is not stylish in terms of buttoncluster. Also 87-key functionality is advanced, and a secondary use. Alluding to it, with something that looks like gaming buttons, without being wrong for either purpose, seems to be the best compromise to me.

I was very obviously not talking about the whole keyboard.  By "gaming style" I mean, for example, any variation of ABXY and Playstation button markings.  The round buttons look like the action buttons, as used on many, but probably not all, controllers for consoles.  I am glad you agree with my proposal.  

I suppose to avoid confusing others in the future I should be even more verbose than I currently am.  I figured people got bored with my long rambling posts, much like they do in spoken word conversations I am involved with when I talk endlessly about obscure topics and details most others are uninterested in, and in such an indirect way that if they were interested they can't follow my points or line of thinking.  Blame Robert Anton Wilson, and others who helped me further screw up how my mind works.

 

[Grench]

Depends what you mean by gaming style. 87-key is not stylish in terms of buttoncluster. Also 87-key functionality is advanced, and a secondary use. Alluding to it, with something that looks like gaming buttons, without being wrong for either purpose, seems to be the best compromise to me.

I was very obviously not talking about the whole keyboard.  By "gaming style" I mean, for example, any variation of ABXY and Playstation button markings.  The round buttons look like the action buttons, as used on many, but probably not all, controllers for consoles.  I am glad you agree with my proposal.  

I suppose to avoid confusing others in the future I should be even more verbose than I currently am.  I figured people got bored with my long rambling posts, much like they do in spoken word conversations I am involved with when I talk endlessly about obscure topics and details most others are uninterested in, and in such an indirect way that if they were interested they can't follow my points or line of thinking.  Blame Robert Anton Wilson, and others who helped me further screw up how my mind works.

Some of my favorite writers are verbose beyond measure.  Isaac Asimov could write pages and pages of engrossing text about the most simple of matters.  I recall an essay he did in IASFM where he went on for nearly 20 pages about different methodologies to count or estimate the dimples/dots in the drop ceiling of his dentist's office - and it was riveting.

 

[Grench]

Action buttons - we don't have to just have 6.  How about 9?

http://www.keyboard-...27105d3810f8d07

  ⌦C     ⇞Y

      ⇤A    ⇥B

  ⌫Z     ⇟X

          Ü

         Ö Ä

 

[kagato]

(^)   (⁛)

    (∴) (:)

(✗)   (•)

Hey, my account still works!

(I don't really have a dog in this race. As much as I love my Pandora, I never really got all that much use out of it, so I can't justify getting a Pyra. But I still check in once in a while to see how it's developing...)

 

[Tenka]

I tried Deadly Caves for the first time this morning.  I like the silly wise man story intro.  Like most cool games there weren't any tutorials or directions so I just pressed all the buttons and figured out what they were then started exploring.  The huge blasty gunfire was fun, but I was going to try to only fight with the sword.

I was falling in the water a lot, I'm not very good at this yet, but it has a really cool style so my failures felt more silly than annoying.  Eventually I still felt like playing something else, so I pressed the typical Fn and Q to quit, which brought up one of those "are you sure?" screens which actually said "Press Y to quit," so I pressed y, but nothing happened, I held shift in case it had to be a capital Y, then I thought maybe I couldn't read the font and pressed v a couple times instead, and then I remembered that the top game button is also labeled Y and pressed that.  That was the order that those ideas occurred to me.

I'm sorry.

 

[Saber]

I tried Deadly Caves for the first time this morning.  I like the silly wise man story intro.  Like most cool games there weren't any tutorials or directions so I just pressed all the buttons and figured out what they were then started exploring.  The huge blasty gunfire was fun, but I was going to try to only fight with the sword.

I was falling in the water a lot, I'm not very good at this yet, but it has a really cool style so my failures felt more silly than annoying.  Eventually I still felt like playing something else, so I pressed the typical Fn and Q to quit, which brought up one of those "are you sure?" screens which actually said "Press Y to quit," so I pressed y, but nothing happened, I held shift in case it had to be a capital Y, then I thought maybe I couldn't read the font and pressed v a couple times instead, and then I remembered that the top game button is also labeled Y and pressed that.  That was the order that those ideas occurred to me.

I'm sorry.

Seems to me that if Fn + q, a two key combo, actually quit the game cold as expected and not brought up a dialogue box that there wouldn't have been a hitch for you Tenka in exiting the game. Alternatively, if this dialogue box was necessary, which I've never played the game so I don't know for certain if it is, then the author could of mapped both "Y's", keyboard and game button, to yes. Then again, depending on the number of keys used in this game, they could of programmed it to use the q key to exit to simplify things.      

 

[ible]

 +∞         π
               2
      π               0 
              3π
 -∞          2

 

[_wb_]

 +∞         π

               2

      π               0 

              3π

 -∞              2

Here's a minor tweak:


 +∞         τ

               4

      π               τ

              3τ

 -∞          4

 

[Binky]

^ Agreed.

Pi is the wrong circle constant!

 

[Urben]

Here's a minor tweak:

 +∞         τ

               4

      π               τ

              3τ

 -∞          4

Game: "Press ∞ Button"

User: "But this thing only has about 100 buttons!"