Saying that most mediaplayer applications still use tape deck symbols strikes me as understating the associations and their history. The use of pointing and arrow-like symbols for indicating direction in a visual or tactile manner is ancient, probably at least as old as the first invention of the arrow or spear and possibly even predating the invention of writing. Pre-modern applications can be found in the aforementioned weapons, other pointed weapons, the hands of a clock, the shadow cast by a sundial, the needle of a compass, and probably many other things I can't think of at the moment. The association of right with moving forward and left with moving backward dates back at least as far as the printing press putting the written word in the hands of the masses, at least for languages that are read from left-to-right(which includes English(The modern lingua franqua of commerce), Latin(the classical lingua franqua of Scholarship), and most, if not all, other languages that use the Roman Alphabet). In addition to right pointing arrows being common symbols for play and fast forward, and left-pointing arrows for rewind, you often see arrows pointing in such directions on the First/previous(left arrow) and next/last(right arrow) links in HTML eBooks that put each chapter on a separate web page. The association of up and down with increasing and decreasing values seems rather intuitive, especially for things like floor number or height, hence the frequent usage of a pair of up and down arrows for such things as volume, tone, speed, etc. The use of a double arrow to do something twice is rather intuitive, and having a double-arrow do a stronger/greater version of what a corresponding single arrow does is a rather straight forward generalization. Not saying you couldn't build a media player interface that doesn't use arrows, but is still easy to learn, but such an interface would lose tapping into the above associations that span cultures and centuries, if not millenia, and an interface that used arrows, but disregarded these associations would have to fight against these associations and would probably be deemed counter-intuitive no matter how easy to learn it is. Granted, even within an interface that works with the above associations, there's room for experimentation. For example, take how the Blaze ET and NLS Talking book player handle variable distance fast forward and rewind: Blaze ET: The heart of playback control is handled by a central play/pause/enter button surrounded by four arrow keys. Up and down arrow cycle options for how far to jump, and left/right arrows move backwards/forwards by the selected amount. The NLS Player just has back, play, and forward buttons. Tapping forward/back will jump by a given interval the number of times tapped while holding will produce larger and larger jumps, a control scheme familiar to anyone who has played a video game with a chargeable weapon. Both schemes are fairly novel yet also feel quite intuitive. If you actually want to complain about archaic, counter-intuitive interfaces on modern computers, that save icons are routinely based off floppy discs and record icons off old-fashioned microphones or that we still use Qwerty keyboards when they were designed to slow down typists so they didn't jam early typewriters are probably better examples. Granted, I'm not sure what you could replace the floppy disk and microphone icons with(Optical has never been practical for read/write storage, Most wouldn't recognize a stack of harddrive platters, flash drives lack a consistent appearance, and SD cards are kind of non-descript. Modern microphones have the same problems as flash drives, and who has time to learn Dvorak well enough to switch to it for daily typing? Though, now I'm curious. I know those blind from birth who gain sight late in life can't automatically translate tactile to visual, but do those blind from birth routinely learn to recognize the letters of the alphabet and other visual symbols when they are embossed or engraved? -- Sincerely, Jeffery Wright President Emeritus, Nu Nu Chapter, Phi Theta Kappa. Former Secretary, Student Government Association, College of the Albemarle. _______________________________________________ Blinux-list mailing list Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list