Action button labels: poll

[God Ginrai]

Feel free to pronounce the symbols as "Triangle", "OpenSquare", "OpenCircle", "Curvy Cross", "Small Up" and "Small Down", if you don't like Greek.

It's not a matter of how you want to pronounce it, but that people can come up with a name for it when they see it. No one is going to think of "Open Square" or "Curvy Cross" when they are trying to name the buttons.

-God Ginrai

 

[Granitehead]

Feel free to pronounce the symbols as "Triangle", "OpenSquare", "OpenCircle", "Curvy Cross", "Small Up" and "Small Down", if you don't like Greek.

It's not a matter of how you want to pronounce it, but that people can come up with a name for it when they see it. No one is going to think of "Open Square" or "Curvy Cross" when they are trying to name the buttons.

-God Ginrai

But they will be able to come up with other descriptions and will be able to understand "Curvy Cross" when they see it. Sooner or later they'll learn the real names. Apps would (and should) mostly use the symbols directly anyway.

 

[God Ginrai]

Feel free to pronounce the symbols as "Triangle", "OpenSquare", "OpenCircle", "Curvy Cross", "Small Up" and "Small Down", if you don't like Greek.

It's not a matter of how you want to pronounce it, but that people can come up with a name for it when they see it. No one is going to think of "Open Square" or "Curvy Cross" when they are trying to name the buttons.

-God Ginrai

But they will be able to come up with other descriptions and will be able to understand "Curvy Cross" when they see it. Sooner or later they'll learn the real names. Apps would (and should) mostly use the symbols directly anyway.

Let's look at a simple button combination that someone who doesn't know the names may try to describe:

ABCXYZ layout:

ABA

Pandora Layout:

XBX

Greek Layout:

Curvy Cross Open Circle Curvy Cross

Greek Layout (once they know the names):

Chi Omega Chi

This quite easily illustrates how much more effort is required to explain anything using the Greek layout, even when they know the names of the characters.

-God Ginrai

 

[levi]

Chi is harder to pronounce than Zee (or Zed)? Granted, Omega is an extra syllable than Ai, Bee, See, Ex, Why or Zed, but that's hardly insurmountable. If we had a W key that'd be three syllables (I think).

 

[Granitehead]

Well, two syllables more when spoken and a few letters when typed. A few syllables when spoken don't matter and the average Pyra-User will type pretty fast, so a few characters don't matter either.

Compared to the Playstation layout it's even "better":

Square

Triangle

Circle

X

=> 6+8+6+1=21 letters

=> 2+3+2+1=8 syllables

Pi

Delta

Omega

Chi

=> 2+5+5+3=15 letters

=> 1+2+3+1=7 syllables

 

[God Ginrai]

Well, two syllables more when spoken and a few letters when typed.

"a few"? It adds up. Omega Delta Omega is 12 characters more than BYB. (14 if you count the spaces you have to add to make a distinction between the words) And that's once you know the character's names. Before that, it is even longer.

Also, I never said the Playstation layout was good. The only thing it has going for it is that you pretty much know exactly what each button is called even when seeing it for the first time.

-God Ginrai

 

[Granitehead]

Yeah, and this makes /so/ much of a difference. Hell, you could even add them as buttons in the forums here to save some time.

But the Playstation layout was chosen by a big company which invested a lot of time into thinking about it. You can be sure they considered short options with less characters and syllables. Yet they've chosen one which is longer. This mean they weighted distinctiveness and beauty more than easiness of name, and so should we in my opinion.

 

[God Ginrai]

Yeah, and this makes /so/ much of a difference.

Yea, it does.

Hell, you could even add them as buttons in the forums here to save some time.

Yea, Because that helps so much over at GP32X, DCEmu, and other forums that are not here. (Also, reddit, twitter, etc.)

But the Playstation layout was chosen by a big company which invested a lot of time into thinking about it. You can be sure they considered short options with less characters and syllables. Yet they've chosen one which is longer. This mean they weighted distinctiveness and beauty more than easiness of name, and so should we in my opinion.

Except that their layout has names that everyone knows, which is why it worked. The Greek layout does not have this benefit. If Sony had picked some symbols that weren't well known, then they would probably have had to backpedal just like they did with the PS3 Boomerang controller.

-God Ginrai

 

[_wb_]

Feel free to pronounce the symbols as "Triangle", "OpenSquare", "OpenCircle", "Curvy Cross", "Small Up" and "Small Down", if you don't like Greek.

It's not a matter of how you want to pronounce it, but that people can come up with a name for it when they see it. No one is going to think of "Open Square" or "Curvy Cross" when they are trying to name the buttons.

-God Ginrai

But they will be able to come up with other descriptions and will be able to understand "Curvy Cross" when they see it. Sooner or later they'll learn the real names. Apps would (and should) mostly use the symbols directly anyway.

Let's look at a simple button combination that someone who doesn't know the names may try to describe:


ABCXYZ layout:


ABA


Pandora Layout:


XBX


Greek Layout:


Curvy Cross Open Circle Curvy Cross


Greek Layout (once they know the names):


Chi Omega Chi


This quite easily illustrates how much more effort is required to explain anything using the Greek layout, even when they know the names of the characters.

-God Ginrai

With the Greek layout you can just as well write "χ Ω χ" or if you don't want to use unicode, something like "X O X" will do.

If you just write "XBX" in the Pandora layout, it's ambiguous what that means. Is it a button combo? Is it something you have to type on the keyboard?

So while we're making up silly arguments, I could claim that this is what you have to write:

Pandora layout:

[X] action button, action button, [X] action button


 


while in the Greek layout it suffices to write:


χ Ω χ


 


Which one is most concise now?

 

[milkshake]

How will X O X do? If your saying people will be dumbfounded between buttons and keys how do you think they think that those characters are the buttons when the O character doesn't appear on the buttons (when using greek symbols) ?

 

[God Ginrai]

With the Greek layout you can just as well write "χ Ω χ" or if you don't want to use unicode, something like "X O X" will do.

 Just because the typed character only looks like one character does not mean that you don't have to type a large number of characters to do that.

And you can't suggest that we can type X O X, because that would be cause exactly the problem that Neelix was talking about, although it would be even worse, because there shouldn't be any confusion considering the only O on the Pyra would be the O key on the keyboard. Neelix's argument works against this suggestion, and if you deny Neelix's argument then you have absolutely no grounds for abandoning ABCXYZ.

If you just write "XBX" in the Pandora layout, it's ambiguous what that means. Is it a button combo? Is it something you have to type on the keyboard?

You literally just got done suggesting X O X for your Greek keys and now you try to shoe in Neelix's argument?

So while we're making up silly arguments

It's hardly a silly argument, however, suggesting that someone needs to surround the letters in brackets and say "action" certainly is. All you would need is the word "button" at most.

Revising your argument to make sense:

Pandora layout:

X button B button X button

while in the Greek layout it suffices to write:

Ctrl+Shift+U+03A7 Ctrl+Shift+U+03A9 Ctrl+Shift+U+03A7

Which one is most concise now?

Seems slightly more concise to use the Greek layout here, but only by a couple of characters. However, if you include the fiddling that you do to change the font of the characters every time you are trying to insert them, I'm sure that actually equates to more effort.

-God Ginrai

 

[_wb_]

With the Greek layout you can just as well write "χ Ω χ" or if you don't want to use unicode, something like "X O X" will do.

 
Just because the typed character only looks like one character does not mean that you don't have to type a large number of characters to do that.


And you can't suggest that we can type X O X, because that would be cause exactly the problem that Neelix was talking about, although it would be even worse, because there shouldn't be any confusion considering the only O on the Pyra would be the O key on the keyboard. Neelix's argument works against this suggestion, and if you deny Neelix's argument then you have absolutely no grounds for abandoning ABCXYZ.

If you just write "XBX" in the Pandora layout, it's ambiguous what that means. Is it a button combo? Is it something you have to type on the keyboard?

You literally just got done suggesting X O X for your Greek keys and now you try to shoe in Neelix's argument?

So while we're making up silly arguments

It's hardly a silly argument, however, suggesting that someone needs to surround the letters in brackets and say "action" certainly is. All you would need is the word "button" at most.


Revising your argument to make sense:

Pandora layout:


X button B button X button


while in the Greek layout it suffices to write:


Ctrl+Shift+U+03A7 Ctrl+Shift+U+03A9 Ctrl+Shift+U+03A7


Which one is most concise now?

Seems slightly more concise to use the Greek layout here, but only by a couple of characters. However, if you include the fiddling that you do to change the font of the characters every time you are trying to insert them, I'm sure that actually equates to more effort.

-God Ginrai

Do you really want to continue this silly discussion?


OK, if ease of entering button combos is that important, then let's put buttons in the forum editor for the Greek buttons (like there is a button for smileys), and let's make it recognize some patterns like /\  []  ()  ><   or whatever and auto-convert them to the right button icon, just like it does now for smileys.


Also, on the Pyra itself, let's make it so that Fn+<button> produces the unicode character that looks like the button label, so those characters become really easy to type.


We could put a tutorial somewhere to explain how, on your other devices, you can map concise shortcuts so you can produce Δ Π Ω χ with just a few keypresses.

To be honest, I don't think this is that important. But I'm not really a gamer. Is this something that PlayStation gamers constantly complain about or something?

 

[milkshake]

No because playstation symbols are universally describable and those shapes are taught at junior school everyone knows what "triangle", "circle", "square", "cross" shapes are.

This is a world away from greek characters

 

[_wb_]

No because playstation symbols are universally describable and those shapes are taught at junior school everyone knows what "triangle", "circle", "square", "cross" shapes are. This is a world away from greek characters

Greek characters that were specifically picked to resemble the PlayStation symbols are "a world away"? Does it really require a PhD to notice the resemblance between Δ Π Ω Χ and Δ □ O X ?  Would you really refuse to press Delta if someone calls it Triangle?

 

[_jr_]

I'm really curious. Where can one graduate from school without having learned and used at least the greek characters included in Exo's proposal? I have a hard time believing that these are not well known.

 

[God Ginrai]

OK, if ease of entering button combos is that important, then let's put buttons in the forum editor for the Greek buttons (like there is a button for smileys), and let's make it recognize some patterns like /\  []  ()  ><   or whatever and auto-convert them to the right button icon, just like it does now for smileys.

 It would behoove you to actually read my posts before responding to the chain:

Hell, you could even add them as buttons in the forums here to save some time.

Yea, Because that helps so much over at GP32X, DCEmu, and other forums that are not here. (Also, reddit, twitter, etc.)

Also, on the Pyra itself, let's make it so that Fn+<button> produces the unicode character that looks like the button label, so those characters become really easy to type.

 Wouldn't such combinations be better to be reserved for characters that non-native English speakers need? (or other important characters) Like oe, ae, etc?

We could put a tutorial somewhere to explain how, on your other devices, you can map concise shortcuts so you can produce Δ Π Ω χ with just a few keypresses.

 This is a lot of effort someone is having to put in just to be able to discuss buttons on a game controller. Not to mention, that is a large barrier of entry for people who don't own the device and are thinking about getting one.

To be honest, I don't think this is that important. But I'm not really a gamer. Is this something that PlayStation gamers constantly complain about or something?

Milkshake answers this pefectly. I also mentioned the same earlier.

-God Ginrai

 

[Granitehead]

I'm really curious. Where can one graduate from school without having learned and used at least the greek characters included in Exo's proposal? I have a hard time believing that these are not well known.

I guess the X-like one (Chi) and the v-like one (Nu) aren't universally known. But those are also the two which are easiest to describe in very few letters.

 

[God Ginrai]

No because playstation symbols are universally describable and those shapes are taught at junior school everyone knows what "triangle", "circle", "square", "cross" shapes are. This is a world away from greek characters

 Greek characters that were specifically picked to resemble the PlayStation symbols are "a world away"? Does it really require a PhD to notice the resemblance between Δ Π Ω Χ and Δ □ O X ?  Would you really refuse to press Delta if someone calls it Triangle?

 Delta and Triangle aren't the problem and you know it. It is Pi and Square, as well as Omega and Circle, that are not close enough. If someone looks at Pi and doesn't know what to call it, "Square" will not come to mind. You can only think it will because you came up with the idea trying to think of things that were similar looking to the Playstation symbols.

I'm really curious. Where can one graduate from school without having learned and used at least the greek characters included in Exo's proposal? I have a hard time believing that these are not well known.

I learned Gamma in Physics, which is not a required class for all colleges in the US. I learned Chi in Stats, which I'm not certain is required everywhere either. I don't remember any basic classes that taught me lower-case Omega, and I can't even tell what that character over Alpha is.

-God Ginrai

 

[_wb_]

Delta (Δ) is widely used to denote differences.

Pi (Π) is a mathematical constant everyone should know (ok, that's lowercase π but that looks almost the same as uppercase Π, depending on the font)

Omega (Ω) is the symbol for Ohm, the SI unit for electrical resistance. Christians may also be familiar with the letter for other reasons.

Chi (Χ) is quite well-known from the statistical Chi-squared test. It looks a lot like an X, so if you don't know it, it's not hard to describe it.

Lambda (λ) is known among computer scientists for lambda calculus / functional programming. Among gamers it's probably best known as the Half-Life logo.

Gamma (γ) is maybe not that widely known. It's the third letter of the Greek alphabet though, so people may have heard "alpha beta gamma" at some point (e.g. radiation).

 

[Granitehead]

How are triangles taught in other countries (i.e. not Switzerland and Germany)? Here around practically everyone should know Alpha, Beta and Gamma as the variables used for the angles in triangles.