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Re: X to close

#91

Post by mehwoot »

jzzskijj wrote: post #87
grimman wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Far from exclusive to them though, and it seems to be (/have been?) a very common thing for IM clients to do. I can live with it as long as the devs put in the appropriate options for the behavior you want, but I'm not happy about it.

I sort of understand the point for IM client, that people won't close it unintentionally. But that is solved by showing a dialog asking do you want to close. Breaking Alt+F4's functionality is such an abomination that it is impossible to understand the thought process behind the decision.

Huh? I thought the point for an IM client is that you don't need a window anywhere, if you have the icon down there. So you can close the main window, or you can separately quit the application.

Re: X to close

#92

Post by gurkendoktor »

batiudrami wrote: post #11

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.

Reminds me of how I use [x] to tick boxes in paper forms in Europe, but I was told in Asia (Taiwan) that I should use a check-mark instead. x is no.

Re: X to close

#93

Post by gnarbarian »

sbw1 wrote: post #13

Interesting, 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

A few counterpoints.

"X marks the spot"

Checking a box to indictate your selection on a form or ballot.

I can't think of any more off the top of my head.

Re: X to close

#94

Post by klazutin »

brador wrote: post #32

When we have completed a todo task we "cross it" to mark it done. i would say the x to close is intended to represent a "crossing out" not the letter x. It is pressed to signify a task has been completed.

My thoughts exactly. Not being from exactly a Western culture (I'm Russian) I always saw the X not as a letter but rather as a cross (Russians say "click the cross to close the window"), a sign of deleting or cancelling something by crossing it out. It made perfect sense so I never even thought there could be other explanations. All because in our language there is no X-exit connection.

Re: X to close

#95

Post by aembleton »

kybernetikos wrote: post #67

The Acorn Arthur operating system, a precursor to Risc OS used a sort of fat X icon to close windows in 1987 http://www.mjpye.org.uk/images/screens/arthur2.gif

I never used Acorn Arthur but I did use RiscOS 3 whilst at primary school circa '91, and this had an X in the corner: http://www.mjpye.org.uk/images/screens/riscos-02.gif

I'm sure the GUI design of RiscOS 3 helped to inspire Windows 95.

Re: X to close

#96

Post by Sharlin »

bane wrote: post #30

Wow great article. I don't agree with his conclusion that it came from Japan. But it's as good a reason as any I suppose. One quick thing, IIR Windows 2.0 and 3.0, the '-' button in the upper left wasn't "close". It was a small menu that happened to have close as an option.

You could double-click it to close, though. And of course the menu (and the double-click-to-close functionality) is still there, it's just that the [-] icon was replaced with the application's own icon. So contrary to the article, the close button was added in Win95, all the other elements are still there.

Re: X to close

#97

Post by crystaln »

If I recall, clicking on the X on old Macs added an X inside the square, so I think there's a step missing from this article.

Re: X to close

#98

Post by tragic »

simias wrote: post #90
ekianjo wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VII or the western version ? I have the Japanese version at home, I can check quickly if needed.

Both versions use O to accept and X to cancel. In the european FFVIII hovewer it was switched around. I think only early and rushed ports of japanese titles used O to accept on the playstation. It's still true today, for instance dark souls on the ps3 uses O to accept on the japanese version and X on the western. I'm still not sure why Sony did that by the way. While I'm willing to believe that X strongly means "bad/…

I think in FFVIII it was Triangle to cancel. (O was the menu button.) They completely jumbled it all up for some reason.

Re: X to close

#99

Post by arethuza »

mjcohenw wrote: post #37

I misinterpreted the title as "X Windows consortium to close."

I'm glad I'm not the only person to think that (mind you this was over breakfast and before much coffee).

I did think very briefly that it was something to do with X, then thought X was a variable as in "$X to close".

Re: X to close

#100

Post by itazula »

seszett wrote: post #73
itazula wrote: post #65

Wow, I had always thought the "X" was like an elevator close button. Sort of like a greater-than sign and a less-than sign put together: ><.

That's interesting... is the latin alphabet your native script?

Yes, English is my first language. I don't know why I internalized that symbol the way I did. And looking at the Atari TOS screenshot, I would have said the symbol in the upper right corner looked like an elevator "open" symbol, something like . But thinking more deeply, > are in only one dimension. They are good for expressing the idea of "close" and "open" respectively, but they fail to acknowledge the two-dimensional character of a window. So, I like what some of the other posters have said about four arrowheads pointing in and out respectively. That said, the symbol of two diagonal, outward-pointing arrows in the upper right corner of Mac OS X windows now strikes me as brilliant; in a minimal way, the idea of maximizing in two dimensions is expressed.
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