Action button labels

[_wb_]

ED has not committed to any labeling yet as far as I know.

His most recent suggestion on IRC was ABXY + I and II. I don't really like that.

It's fine if you don't like Greek letters, but please try to make constructive alternative proposals instead of just bashing Greek and killing discussion by constantly repeating that there is nothing left to discuss.

I still haven't seen any Latin proposal that actually looks good to me.

 

[_wb_]

Here's my opinion:

Latin letters function clarity grade: C. Aesthetics: D. Backwards-compatibility: A. Symbol familiarity: A.

Greek letters function clarity grade: A. Aesthetics: B. Backwards-compatibility: C. Symbol familiarity: B.

Using your new scale:

Latin letters function clarity grade: A. Aesthetics: B. Backwards-compatibility: A. Symbol familiarity: A.

Greek letters function clarity grade: F. Aesthetics: C. Backwards-compatibility: F. Symbol familiarity: F.

Function clarity F because there are no logical 'groups' of symbols within the set.

Aesthetics: C, but only because I'd have felt guilty giving it all Fs.

Backwards-compatibility: F because it's completely broken.

Symbol familiarity: F because they're characters from a near-dead language.  They are only well understood by academics.

I was trying to make an honest evaluation. I don't think you are being entirely honest here.

If having logical 'groups' of symbols is what you mean by function clarity, then it makes no sense to give good marks to a Latin layout with a completely weird order (C Y A B Z X).

What I meant with function clarity was something different:

- how clear is it which button/key is meant? (confusion with keyboard keys?)

- can you associate functional meaning to the labels? (e.g. Π for Menu,  Δ for Jump, things like that where the button label may help to remember what the button does)

Aesthetics is of course something subjective so I won't comment on that.

You give rather extreme marks for Backwards compatibility and Symbol familiarity. A layout that uses ABXY but in a different order than on the Pandora seems worse to me in terms of Backwards compatibility than a layout with new symbols -- both break compatibility, but at least the latter does not cause confusion. Also note that Chi and X are nearly the same, so at least for that button there is not really a problem (and it is a reasonable assumption that once you know where one button is, the three others will be in the same relative positions).

For Symbol familiarity, I agree that Greek is less widely known than Latin, but it's still much more widely known (especially to the Pyra target demographic) than some alternatives like Runes, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, etc. Do you really want to argue that e.g. pi is a letter that nearly nobody knows?

 

[milkshake]

When it comes to Greek symbols there is nothing left to discuss is there? which is why its getting boring reading more posts about the use of Greek symbols when its highly unlikely that Ed is not going to consider them.

When this sort of thing happens then people need to gracefully let it go.

By all means add new suggestions etc but just let the Greek stuff go.

 

[levi]

I wouldn't mind the new buttons being called I and II. Seems to me they really need to be distinguished from the existing buttons in some way other than their size, since if you see a layout with C and Z buttons in apparently random places, it makes the whole layout seem nonsensical (and while I dislike the Pandora ABXY layout, at least it has some logic to it in isolation).

 

[sebt3]

We all know that you want:

<snipped image>

Posting this one once is fun. Doing it twice is borderline. Doing it repeatly is rather insulting...

 

[_wb_]

Yes, something different (not C and Z or other single Latin letters) would be good for the extra buttons. But Roman numerals are not a good idea imo. They can be conceptually confused with number keys, they are Latin letters I, and visually they look like lowercase l.

 

[milkshake]

what about colours? black and white? or yellow and green? or something like that? at least then you can just refer to the colour of the button.

 

[levi]

To convince the majority to accept the dreaded colour option, I think a mockup that shows it looking decisively un-toy-like is needed.

 

[_wb_]

what about colours? black and white? or yellow and green? or something like that? at least then you can just refer to the colour of the button.

Colors are probably too expensive -- it could be that the action buttons will be on the keyboard mat, with only white/black/blue available. But something abstract like "white (filled) circle" and "black square" (i.e. a non-filled white square) could work.

Idea: what about this?

Larger image here: http://people.cs.kuleuven.be/~jon.sneyers/tmp/action_buttons3.png

Yes, it is a rip-off of the PlayStation symbols on top of the Pandora Latin layout. I forgot who originally had this idea, but Circle can be seen as 1 (imagine a big point), Cross can be seen as 2 (two lines), triangle is 3 and square is 4. Building on that, we have the Black Diamond key (5) and the White Star key (6).

 

[Neelix]

I honestly can't see any good reason to put multiple unrelated symbols on any single gaming button,  unless they somehow form a single concept, or represent multiple functions.  And I don't believe we should give these keys multiple preset functions. (ie keep it to just PgUp, PgDn etc)  Put simply, if you are going to put YABX on the buttons anyway, then I see no point in attaching other additional concepts to them.

- Neelix

 

[_wb_]

I honestly can't see any good reason to put multiple unrelated symbols on any single gaming button,  unless they somehow form a single concept, or represent multiple functions.  And I don't believe we should give these keys multiple preset functions. (ie keep it to just PgUp, PgDn etc)  Put simply, if you are going to put YABX on the buttons anyway, then I see no point in attaching other additional concepts to them.

- Neelix

Well it's basically a way to have backwards compatibility and Latin letters for those who really want Latin letters, while also having a non-ambiguous way to refer to the action buttons without resorting to verbose descriptions like "action button A" -- in games, you can just show a square, you can call the button SQUARE or Sq or something like that. And of course for PSX/PSP emulation it would be nice too.

It's not really an "additional symbol", you can see it as just text decoration. E.g. in unicode, boxed A is U+1F130 () and circled B is U+24B7 (Ⓑ).

 

[Neelix]

Alternate names for the buttons would only be useful if they became the commonly used names.   If you put more than one set of names to the buttons, then one set will become commonly used,  the others will be mostly ignored.  I see no practical advantage.  

If you want decorated keys for purely aesthetic reasons then that's another matter entirely, and none of the previous arguments are relevant.

- Neelix 

 

[_wb_]

If you want decorated keys for purely aesthetic reasons then that's another matter entirely, and none of the previous arguments are relevant.

I would call it decorated keys with a not-so-hidden agenda of providing an evolutionary pathway to eventually get rid of the Pandora layout.

 

[_wb_]

Larger image: http://people.cs.kuleuven.be/~jon.sneyers/tmp/action_buttons4.png

This concept is based on the alchemical symbols: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemical_symbol)

Four basic elements
Main article: Classical elements

Western alchemy makes use of the Hellenic elements. The symbols used for these are:[1]

• Earth
  
• Water
• Air
• Fire

but the symbols are a bit modified to hide ABXY in them.

These symbols are also appropriate for Home/End/PgUp/PgDn.

 

[Natsu]

If the Pandora layout is going to be change, he would straight out get rid of it. No "evolutionary pathway" needed.

 

[TrashyMG]

^ Well Heart should be added if you want to summon Captain Planet.

 

[levi]

These symbols are also appropriate for Home/End/PgUp/PgDn.

How so? Home and end, in a text editing context at least, are horizontal actions, while page up/down are vertical. All your arrows point up or down (or 16.5 degrees off the vertical if you use the other corners, I suppose).

 

[EvilDragon]

Well, since you were asking for my realistic opinion here:

First, we need to think about what's important for a button layout.

Here is what I think is important:
 

• Developers of homebrew games should not have to use any additional images / etc. just for "Press XYZ Button to continue", whatever font they use.
• It's impossible to create a design that fits all of the emulated systems, so it does not need have to be based on any of them.
• Easy recognizable and memorable by any gamer (so no complex shapes, etc.)

So far, both Greek shapes and Latin characters are usable for that.

If we keep Latin characters, it doesn't make sense for me though to change the letters.

Why?

Well, there are a lot of homebrew games or emulators, etc. for the Pandora out already.

They all already have stuff like "Press A to run and X to Jump" included. Changing the layout with latin letters would mean that all these would have to be changed and recompiled for the Pyra... which is a lot of work and I'm not sure everyone will do that.

I've seen the greek letters - and basically two different layouts:

One similar to the PSX (which doesn't make sense to me because it's no PSX) and one similar to the Pandoras layout (which sounds okay for me, as it's easy to figure out when running Pandora homebrew).

Everything else doesn't really make sense to me, but maybe someone can explain to me why exactly we need to change our current layout...?

It doesn't help with emulators, but it makes things a lot more confusing for existing Pandora programs and homebrew.

So my idea is:

Either keep the current layout (and add something new like I and II for the two new buttons (like PC Engine)) or use the greek one which is similar to our current one.

However, that would probably still be a bit annoying for devs... if I'd be coding a game, I would need to look up how to type greek letters on my keyboard.

 

[_wb_]

I've seen the greek letters - and basically two different layouts:

One similar to the PSX (which doesn't make sense to me because it's no PSX) and one similar to the Pandoras layout (which sounds okay for me, as it's easy to figure out when running Pandora homebrew).

Everything else doesn't really make sense to me, but maybe someone can explain to me why exactly we need to change our current layout...?

It doesn't help with emulators, but it makes things a lot more confusing for existing Pandora programs and homebrew.

Changing the current layout is desirable mainly for these three reasons:

- Unlike dedicated game consoles, the Pyra has a keyboard which already has buttons labeled with A, B, X and Y (and C, Z, I). Although the confusion this causes can somewhat be avoided by using graphical images like guihints or by using language conventions like "A button" and "A key", it is still not considered to be good practice to have two different buttons with the same label.

- The Pandora layout is different from all other major consoles which can be emulated on it. It is unavoidable to be different from many of them, but it is not necessary to be different from all of them. When playing emulated games, you have to mentally map physical buttons to emulated buttons. This is harder if the source and target set of symbols are the same. E.g. to play SNES games on the Pandora you have to remember that A is B, B is X, Y is A, X is Y. By using a different symbol set, you still have to learn a mapping, but at least there is less potential confusion.

- There is no convincing proposal to extend the Pandora layout to 6 buttons in a way that makes sense.

The Pyra is no PSX, but it will be able to emulate the PSX and PSP, so switching to a Greek layout with letters that resemble the PSX layout certainly helps for emulation of those consoles.

For existing Pandora programs and games, it is true that changing the labels takes some effort. On the other hand, it would be a good opportunity to standardize guihint button icons (cf. http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/15778-pandorapyra-applications-usrsharepandyra/) and encourage Pandora/Pyra devs to modify their interfaces and help screens to use those standard guihints. This would help a lot to create a nice uniform look and feel.

For people who want to type the button names as Greek letters, we could make it so that e.g. Fn+[button] produces the actual symbol. Also, putting the letters Π Ω Δ χ somewhere visible on the home page or in a pinned thread in the dev subforum makes it easy to just copy/paste the symbols when you need them. But I think guihints are still a better approach for almost all applications (basically everything with a graphical UI).

 

[_wb_]

These symbols are also appropriate for Home/End/PgUp/PgDn.

How so? Home and end, in a text editing context at least, are horizontal actions, while page up/down are vertical. All your arrows point up or down (or 16.5 degrees off the vertical if you use the other corners, I suppose).

Home and End are also often used to go to the very top and bottom of things (e.g. in menus, file lists, web browsers). It's not really a specifically horizontal or vertical action, but rather "Go to begin" and "Go to end", First and Last.