Action button labels, again


Actually these are the real ISO symbols:
international-keys.jpg

 
as used e.g. here:
clavier.gif

 
 
 
 
But I don't really like how that would look on our game buttons:
 
    ⎗
   ⇱     ⇲
    ⎘
 
 

Luckily, those ISO symbols are rarely used and not very well-known. So instead of those symbols, I would propose to use the following Unicode symbols:
 
 ⌶      ⇞
    ⇤     ⇥ 
⌦     ⇟
 
I forgot what the actual ISO symbols were, but doesnt their unknown character make the point moot?

A semi-resemblance to the ISO-symbols is not something that gets communicated at face value.

I kinda like  ␥ but i dont know how to type it.

Long story short i tried a lot of things and made something that required a mirrored sigma, for which there is no symbol.

In the end its a tradeoff between easy enough to type, and not so "easy" that it gets mistaken verbatim for other primary keys. Thats why i landed at <v^> and also because it retained the symmetry.
 
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I'm not too picky about what's on the buttons, I think some variation of A B X Y is probably the best bet for the main 4.

for the other two something like a diamond and circle would be cool.

If I was just making it for me I'd do something like this:

hb9RWxy.png
 
I           Y

       P        A

II          R
 
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Seems to me that being able to uniquely describe them easily on a normal keyboard is important.

So "triangle" or "delta" or "home" are good, roman characters, arrows and weird symbols are bad.

...that is until someone points out why I'm wrong, probably in the post below  :rolleyes:
 
Good point, but how can you have directional shapes without that?

The problem is unique and low entrophy shapes is already done by playstation, and they got all the best shapes.

So we have <v^> as the easiest possible shapes.

The lowest possible complexion i was able to add to "the pointy", is this (waited to implement, and in the meantime forgot and started simplifying)

buttoncluster.png

It has the benefit of being easier to describe as "the one that looks like" W M 3 and Σ (or E), at the cost of more complexity and with dual colors, a more difficult/costly key to make.

The problem is there is no inverse sigma-symbol.

Smaller buttons are flathead and screw.
 
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Seems to me that being able to uniquely describe them easily on a normal keyboard is important.

So "triangle" or "delta" or "home" are good, roman characters, arrows and weird symbols are bad.

...that is until someone points out why I'm wrong, probably in the post below  :rolleyes:
If all else fails, we can still use Home/End/PgUp/PgDn/Ins/Del.

Who needs to type the labels of those keys? Mostly people writing documentation. As long as the labels can be represented in Unicode, I see no problem: you just have to copy/paste them from somewhere.

Who else? Perhaps people who will be talking about native Pyra games on these boards? Some convention will be used, perhaps < ^ v > like comradekingu proposes (regardless of what the actual labels are), perhaps West North South East, perhaps some kind of ascii art like |<-   ->|  or something, perhaps Action Left/Right/Up/Down. Probably N  S  E  W  NW  SW would be a good convention when the context makes clear that you're talking about action buttons.

In the end, I think it's like ↵ for Enter or ⇧ for Shift. Nobody is suggesting that we shouldn't use those symbols to label those keys because those symbols are hard to type or describe.
 
The thing is, they will already have names - Home, End, PgUp, PgDn, and (probably) Insert and Delete.
I think _wb_ has the right of it in choosing symbols to represent those functions, as those names will be an unambiguous way to refer to those keys that won't clash with the scheme used by any emulator the user might be running. While it might be unconventional for a gaming device, the Pyra is more than just a gaming device, so for the Pyra it works.

That said, I'm not sure about _wb_'s choice of symbols, but I've not seen any better options either.

- Neelix

Edit: :ph34r: by _wb_
 
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Curiously both chromebook and macbook air come without enter and shift symbols.

For me the issue is having the same convention in the same area of the keyboard. Shift enter tab and backspace are in one such cluster. It makes sense to use symbols on a small device,

but ISO-symbols only go so far. I could never bring myself to accept all of them.

Maybe we can do a vote in firstpost when all ideas and arguments are in?
 
I don't actually remember seeing any posts on the forums here asking which Pandora game buttons to press in certain games.  That coming up in conversation a lot and needing to be typed or copied and pasted is mentioned a lot by those who want nothing to change because shut up, and that sounds like a very good point, but I actually never see anybody asking "Do I press the A button or the B button to do things?" or anything.

comradekingu, isn't your button label preference close enough to _wb_'s for you to feel happy with _wb_'s?  I certainly have personal reasons I think _wb_'s is cooler, but besides that, doncha think that firmly steering attention from a good idea to an extremely similar good idea is going to divide up opinions over silly little details and make the overall idea look weaker?

Votes for "ABCD I CAN SPELL": 75

Votes for "⇞ ⇤ ⇟ ⇥": 57

Votes for "^ < v >": 48

"Well, I guess the community likes the old way best!"
 
^ That right there is why simple majority voting should not be used if there are more than two options. Consider a ranking-based voting system. Let's assume the arrowy people always set the other arrowy option as their second favorite, and alphabet-people evenly spread their second and third places among the arrowy options. You get the following results:

  • ABCD: 1. 75,  2. 0,  3. 105
  • ⇞⇤⇟⇥: 1. 57,  2. 85,  3. 38
  • ^<v>: 1. 48,  2. 95,  3. 37
We can now issue weights to the ranks. Let's go with a simple 2p, 1p, 0p system:

  • ABCD: 2*75 + 1*0 + 0*105 = 150
  • ⇞⇤⇟⇥: 2*57 + 1*85 + 0*38 = 199
  • ^<v>: 2*48 + 1*95 + 0*37 = 191
Does that look like it better describes the collective opinion of the people in your vote?
 
^ Why bother?

I'm hypotheically right and, hypothetically, everyone agrees with me.

We should just go ahead and order 5000 hypothetical keymats!
 
Material and colours available for buttoncluster needs to be disclosed.

What i can say is the one i like the most is the most iconic one, being the straight lines and coloured square brackets. There is something to be said for something that just blends in without notice too, <^v> is that one. Im not opposed to ⇞⇤⇟⇥, since it has the quality of not being abxy, and it does have direction, but for me its needless complexion and it favours one set of pairs over the other.

I also think much of the focus on being able to reference the buttons is bit of a constructed criteria. As long as it isnt ABXY, that takes care of itself.

<^v> is a system that works for showing direction. With the colours i think its enough to reference the W3EM symbols, its a little bit to far removed from ⇞⇤⇟⇥

If ^ is ⇞, its not obvious that ↑ isnt.
 
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⎀ is iso insert.

means tab

is leftward tab

unicode  page up

  unicode page down

⌫    U+232B    Delete / Backspace
␡    U+2421    Alternative DEL
⌦    U+2326    Forward delete

is nothing

is function, finite finite function
 
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I could see something like this :

+     Y

    P    R

_     A

Or maybe just go with numbers.

Apart from that, I like the plus-minus better, ans I'm tied between a Unicode or arrow-like design.

If we take the BAXY layout, Microsoft couldn't sue us as they borrowed it from the Dreamcast. :D

Please note that we shouldn't use any symbols that aren't either already writable with a keyboard (like latin alphabet) or ASCII art doable, as some software and forum may not support Unicode or ISO.
 
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