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Re: Re[2]: Numbers or Letters when labeling a graphic?
Subject:Re: Re[2]: Numbers or Letters when labeling a graphic? From:grant -at- hedgewizard -dot- net To:sharipunyon -at- gmail -dot- com Date:Mon, 23 Apr 2018 20:27:24 -0600 (MDT)
Not unreasonable points, but if you follow that logic, then your
numbers should be translated as well. Not all languages natively use
Arabic numbers. (Japanese, for example.)
As for matching symbols, have you put anything from IKEA together?
<grin> Honestly, as long as the symbols are distinct from each other,
I think you could use zodiac signifiers and people would be able to
follow. They might think you were a little strange, but nobody is going
to confuse Leo and Pisces, or Taurus and Aquarius. <smile>
On April 23, 2018 at 5:37 PM [1]sharipunyon -at- gmail -dot- com wrote:
Imagine trying to decipher Chinese letters, or random symbols and
matching them with call out information. Also, the order of items
can matter, for example if you are documenting a workflow or
movement along a path. Numbers are just easier to deal with than
letters. And you would have to specify to the agency to not
translate the letters, and believe me they will anyway, at least
occasionally.
On Apr 23, 2018, at 5:53 PM, Grant Hogarth wrote:
Question: Why translate the letters at all? Effectively they are
just symbols to link up item on screen with item in text.
Nobody is "reading" them as text.
Grant
------ Original Message ------
From: [2]sharipunyon -at- gmail -dot- com
To: "Lin Sims"
Cc: "TECHWR-L"
Sent: 4/23/2018 3:45:44 PM
Subject: Re: Numbers or Letters when labeling a graphic?
Short answer: you are right.
Long answer: relettering all the graphics for translations is costly
and time consuming. You are also now dealing with different
alphabets, including Asian, Cyrillic, Arabic, etc. in your graphic
program. Ugly and expensive.
At my last job, we only used numbers in the graphic, and created a
callout table below, primarily because of translation.
As to the placement of the callouts, I'm not a graphic person, but
it seems like you are separating the reference from the referee, and
possibly adding a lot of lines everywhere.
On Apr 23, 2018, at 4:18 PM, Lin Sims wrote:
My coworker and I are having a minor disagreement over whether we
should
use numbers or letters when labeling a graphic. Said graphic could
be
elements of a UI or parts of a piece of hardware or a map showing
locations
of objects.
He says use letters, because that way readers won't think the labels
are
correlated to procedure steps (if there are any).
I say use numbers because you don't have to worry about translations
to
other languages if /when that happens, and also you don't have to
worry
about going over 26 labels in a diagram.
He's mostly working on the hardware products, which don't normally
have
that many labels. Right now I'm working on software user interfaces,
and
they have a lot of items that need explaining (oddly, the interface
is
fairly clean and doesn't look crowded, but they managed to fit in a
LOT of
information and controls).
I even showed him my "Illustrating Computer Documentation" book that
has
numbers, and he's not only disagreeing with the numbers, he says all
the
labels have to be aligned at the top and bottom with connecting
lines,
because putting the labels inside the graphic is "messy".
I, of course, have labels all OVER the place (left to right, top to
bottom,
as close to what's being labeled as I can manage without obscuring
anything).
I plan to drag out my Tufte books to see if this is addressed at all
(doubt
it, but will look), but are there any good resources out there for
best
practises?
There is no house style manual; that's one of the things we plan to
address
RSN.
--
Lin Sims
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