Posted by David Segall on 09/27/19 11:38

"Alan J. Flavell" <flavell@physics.gla.ac.uk> wrote:

>
>On Tue, 17 Jan 2006, David Segall wrote:
>
>> Dylan Parry <usenet@dylanparry.com> wrote:
>>
>> >Pondering the eternal question of "Hobnobs or Rich Tea?", David Segall
>> >finally proclaimed:
>> >
>> >> I have the usual flags to denote various languages
>> >
>> >Stop right there. http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/flags.html
>>
>> Your argument (I assume you agree) is basically "Don't use icons
>> because they may be misunderstood and/or offend someone".
>
>Then you haven't read the article properly.
Can you suggest a way of reading the article "properly" without
agreeing with it?
>
>> It contradicts a thirty year history in the development of user
>> interfaces but, of course, that does not mean that you are wrong.
>
>Take a look at http://www.google.co.uk/language_tools, for example.
>
>I won't say that everything that Google does is right, but this seems
>OK to me. The flags denote *countries*. The languages are denoted by
>their *names*.
I don't need to make that distinction on my site. In any case, nobody
would recommend using any form of icons for such a large number of
choices unless they were beside the names in a drop down list. It is
not even consistent since it uses a drop down list to represent
countries in one part and a page of icons in another.
>
>Any other interpretation of national flags is doomed, except in a
>limited number of special cases. But special cases are a poor
>starting point for anything that's meant to work in a WWW situation.
Icons are necessarily special cases. Jukka Korpela's article
acknowledges the universal use of the Union Jack as an icon meaning
English. It is used, not only on web pages, but in instruction manuals
and airport lounges.

Finally, I have to acknowledge that I have already lost this argument.
Next time I am anxiously scanning the notices in a European airport I
will have to look for a "flag" that spells out "en" instead of the one
most English speakers recognise instantly.
<http://europa.eu.int/comm/ipg/library/standard_images_en.htm#language_icone>
It is a triumph of misplaced logic and ethnic/national sensitivity
over communication.

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