Dr J R Stockton <jrs@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> In rec.arts.sf.science message <1205798948.260289@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> Mon, 17 Mar 2008 19:09:08, Michael Ash <mike@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> posted:
>>Dr J R Stockton <jrs@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>> In rec.arts.sf.science message <1205718136.64961@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
>>> Sun, 16 Mar 2008 20:42:16, Michael Ash <mike@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> posted:
>>>>>
>>>>> I pasted the single character pi, from Character Map (U+03C0 : Greek
>>>>> Small Letter Pi) into the MS IE 6 Address Bar, and got 3750000
results.
>>>>
>>>>Typing "pi" requires two button presses. I'd wager that your sequence
>>>>requires several times more than that.
>>>
>>> No button presses; all done by mouse. Easy if one has a pi handy.
>>
>>What kind of button do you have on your mouse which doesn't require you
to
>>press it?
>
> Because you wrote "typing", I was considering you to be referring to key
> presses; mouse buttons are much easier to use because, once the hand is
> on the mouse, aiming at the button is trivial.
I used the word because it was what I was doing, not the general focus.
It's true that aiming the finger is much easier with the mouse, but unless
you also aim the *mouse* it's not going to be very useful. The im****tant
factor here (well, ignoring the fact that this entire conversation is
ridiculously un-im****tant) is time or effort. In general, a mouse click is
roughly on par with a keystroke in those categories, and often much worse.
On my machine, the two are equivalent. I'm on a Mac, and I can type the
letter "pi" using option-p, which is two keystrokes. I can also go through
the character palette and spend a lot more time searching for it that way
too.
> Such arguments apart, it *is* worth noting that useful input to search
> engines is not limited to the ASCII character set, nor to languages that
> one can read.
It is indeed. The web overall has taken great strides over the past couple
of years to become friendly to non-ASCII text, although I still encounter
sites which eat my accents or asian characters with alarming frequency.
--
Michael Ash
Rogue Amoeba Software
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