Re: Recharging batteries: lack of a common visual vocabulary

Conrad Taylor wrote:
> "Why oh why oh why oh why..."  can't we have some kind of
> visual vocabulary standardisation in this area? (!*@?)

Having a little experience in working with electronics
engineers, it often seems to come down to two things:

 + what does the circuit design that we're using for
   charging support easily?

 + what is the cheapest thing that could provide any
   kind of indication of behaviour?

Sometimes, of course, it's just blithering UI design
incompetence on the part of the designers.

(I know this, because I, with some other software developers,
once had to gang up on an electronics engineer to make him
change his "design" for a low-battery warning LED; it came
on when the battery was low. Since the battery technology
was Ni-Cd, whose voltage falls off a cliff at a certain point,
it would go out shortly thereafter. So, it worked if-and-only-if
you were looking at it in the 20-second window when it would be on.)

BTW, I do agree that something standardized would be good; I'm
never sure if my Ricoh camera battery charger's LED is off because
the battery is charged, or because it's not plugged in.
-- 
Frank Wales [[email protected]]
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