Re: [xml-dev] Topics of keen interest to me ... how about you?

On Mon, Aug 12, 2013 at 6:54 PM, Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com> wrote:

It's not clear to me that communication and use of email addresses works significantly better than communication and use of phone numbers.

True. But we must communicate names anyway, and if phone numbers were (or were nearly) names, that would be a huge win. I'd like my phone number to be "nyc*johnwcowan", which is unique. It might be less unique with a simplistic letter-number mapping, though; I agree that a 26-key or 36-key vocabulary would be painful and expensive in terms of both phone instrument and phone switch hardware.

Paradoxically, though, the UK then adopted alphanumeric postal codes while the US uses numeric codes.

I believe that mail sorters originally had 10-key keyboards.

In all of this, if you are claiming usability benefits, you need to say what your metrics are. Ability to recall numbers? Ability to dial numbers accurately? Ability to communicate numbers accurately, e.g. looking them up in a phone book? Efficiency or effectiveness? You also need to define the users you are targeting: the average, the old, the disabled?

All true. I was primarily thinking about "How do I call Stepan Stepanovich?" as the issue at hand: having to map him to 429-204-2033 was a big nuisance before phone/computer integration.

--
GMail doesn't have rotating .sigs, but you can see mine at http://www.ccil.org/~cowan/signatures