I always found it interesting that Sony swapped the X and O buttons for the western Playstation market. In Japan X (batsu) does mean "back" or "no", whereas elsewhere it is reversed.
X to close
11–20 of 204 posts
Re: X to close
#12They mention X and O on the PS controller but usually in games O is for no and X is for yes. Completely opposite of the batsu/maru, incorrent/correct they were discussing.
Re: X to close
#13Interesting, but the connection to symbols from Japan seems a bit dubious (or at least not very recent). The term "cross out", and hence the use of an "x" to indicate negating something, seems to have been in common use in English since at least the 1920s:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cross+out
Re: X to close
#14No 'x' to close vi? Was that not always there? I've certainly been using it as long as I can remember; that's not to say it's always been there though - does anyone know when it was first available? Edit: seems Wordstar used X too, probably starting in 1978.
Well, that's different. You are talking about an "x" that you type in, as opposed to an "x" you can click on. To answer your question, "x" (short for eXit) was available in vi from the beginning: ZZ Exits the editor. (Same as :xCR) Source: Bill Joy's "An Introduction to Display Editing with Vi" http://www.verticalsysadmin.com/vi/vi_editor__bill_joy.pdf
Yes, it's different, but the article was trying argue that since "X" wasn't used in that context at the time it was introduced as a GUI element, the GUI element couldn't possibly be referencing the letter as a way of closing a program. While I agree that it's unlikely that the GUI "X" refers to a letter "X", that's not a valid argument for that position.
Edit: and thanks for the vi ref.
Re: X to close
#15Lots of banner ads make the close symbol e.g. the second from right (swap maximize and close) or swap the functions... thus exploiting muscle memory of people to open the ad :/
Re: X to close
#16They mention X and O on the PS controller but usually in games O is for no and X is for yes. Completely opposite of the batsu/maru, incorrent/correct they were discussing.
Try playing some Japanese games on PS. It's the other way round in Japanese games
Re: X to close
#17I recall being mildly shocked when Windows 95 came out with the the [x] button. I don't know why, but I thought that it was somewhat dangerous to allow users to quickly exit an application like this.
Maybe it's because I was used to Windows 3.11, where you had to actually double-click the [-] button to exit an application.
Re: X to close
#18They mention X and O on the PS controller but usually in games O is for no and X is for yes. Completely opposite of the batsu/maru, incorrent/correct they were discussing.
not always. western games tend to be bound that way, but Japanese games, espescially RPGs , were not.
example : final fantasy 7 control bindings. http://www.cavesofnarshe.com/ff7/buttons.php
Re: X to close
#19They mention X and O on the PS controller but usually in games O is for no and X is for yes. Completely opposite of the batsu/maru, incorrent/correct they were discussing.
In Japan they're sometimes switched. That is to say, I've worked on PS3 games where the US SKU had X=accept, O=back but the Japanese SKU had X=back, O=accept.
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Re: X to close
#20They mention X and O on the PS controller but usually in games O is for no and X is for yes. Completely opposite of the batsu/maru, incorrent/correct they were discussing.
On the PS1, Final Fantasy VII was O=yes, X=no, and so were a bunch of the less mainstream JRPGS; also, Metal Gear Solid games were O=yes, X=no at least into the PS2 era.