XKCD - [1]Standards

[1] https://xkcd.com/927/

The Gnomewreckers at Red Hat can help with this, you all just need to standardize on systemd.

Situation: there are now 16 competing standards.

"Standards... So many to choose from..."

XKCD - [1]Carcinization

(a year on the dot since Sir Sham Cad 's [2]prescient komment ;)

[1] https://xkcd.com/2314/

[2] https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2024/07/25/ai_will_eat_itself/

In the world BX[0], Andrew S. Tanenbaum once said "The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from."

[0] B efore X KCD.

Name and shame.

This needs to be done. Kick the anthill and get them moving.

Ten people?

I've worked in companies where there are more than ten people responsible for UI standardization in each department and even they can't agree with each other.

As for cars, they may standardize on a wheel & a couple of pedals, but beyond that it's a free-for-all. It was bad enough when every manufacturer just put indicator and light switches in different places, but now that they're infested with touchscreen UIs designed by people who don't even drive they are even worse. Hire a car at an airport these days & you'll spend so long just to figure out how to start the engine, turn on the lights and adjust the seat that you'll end up trying to read the user manual on your phone (because they don't even print them nowadays).

This is a lost cause. Even voting with your wallet won't help.

I stopped at a filling station to top up a recent Toyota before returning it. I could not figure out how to open the fuel filler cap.

Searching online eventually revealed that it was opened by a small black button, embedded in the black carpet, hidden in the shadows under the seat. All it was missing was the "beware of the leopard" sign.

Was it labelled in black on a black background?

The rear seat heater was about in the same convenient position in a van I rented once.

Couldn't figure out why the air conditioner was having such a hard time cooling the cabin...

Agreed. Our van and car have the steering wheel, turn signals, gas pedal, and brake pedal in the same places, but everything else is different. Headlights: one is a knob on the dashboard, one is a twist of the turn signal lever. Windshield wipers: one is a twist of the turn signal lever (and push it in for cleaning), another is a separate, dedicated lever that you push up, down, and twist (all 3!) to get the different settings. Gearshift: One is on the dashboard, the other is between the seats. (At least they're both P-R-N-D.) Different ways of moving seats, opening the hood, opening the gas flap...

Cars are NOT standardized!

> (At least they're both P-R-N-D.)

There's a US law for that. I dimly remember the before times when you never knew what the shift pattern was, and some makers persisted in stupid choices.

https://www.jalopnik.com/why-prndl-5870701

US Department of Transportation Standard No. 102. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2024-title49-vol6/pdf/CFR-2024-title49-vol6-sec571-102.pdf

(Current doc says 2024, but I know this became The Standard in the early 1960s.)

I rented Kia SUV's a couple of times and loved them, EXCEPT, where are the knobs? I would have bought one, but waiting for the model year when all the knobs come back so I can minimize touchscreening...

There aren't. Even if there's a single person at each of those companies, which there isn't, their choosing to try to standardize this wouldn't make any difference. Not even for their own hardware. Samsung's chief of UI commands that colors will always appear in the same place. The phone, television, appliance, watch, website, web app, individual phone app, Windows laptop driver setting program, etc teams all have to get that memo and implement this change, but not all of them even have the same places. Phones and televisions at least both have a device settings page, and I'm going to guess that any setting they offer about colors is already in there under display, but many of the other things don't have one, so it can't be put there. Just trying to standardize Samsung's UI settings would take lots of people.

But that's not what the author wants. The author wants to be able to set that globally, up to and including inter-device automatic sync, effective on all software and websites. That's far more than ten people. Let's consider what the worst group is for the user described who can't see blue on white well. The worst system isn't the one that allows you to make that change but you have to set it manually. That's annoying of course, but at least you can set it to something better after some effort. The worst ones are the ones that don't have any options for color schemes except whatever their UI person set it to, and that's a lot of things. A standardized place to put the controls and syncing the data structure everywhere, while being mildly tricky and almost impossible respectively, would do nothing to fix that. So even if those ten people existed and could perfectly coordinate and impose the plan on the hundreds or thousands of people it would take to implement it everywhere, the biggest problem would still be there.

I am reminded of the perennial efforts to bring together the different churches of Christianity (Ecumenism), or any other religion for that matter.

All churches involved invariably agree that they are part of one religion. They also invariably agree that their version is the real, ture standard that everyone should adhere to.

So, nothing happens.

Not nothing.

Everyone is able to find a denomination or congregation within which they can feel (reasonably) comfortable. Some people get comfort from a set liturgy they know and can follow, others like less structure; some like calm, others more "happy-clappy"; some get more assurance from a formal leadership hierarchy, others a universal priesthood; and so on.

Many denominations work together within their communities, whilst maintaining separate "administrative hierarchies".

> Everyone is able to find a denomination or congregation within which they can feel (reasonably) comfortable

Especially those at the top who mysteriously get rather wealthy

So, nothing happens.

Either that, or you get a Holy War.

Sometimes "nothing happens" is the best outcome.

Ah yes, the Catholic and Protestant priests arguing over the finer points of theology - eventually the Catholic says " ok let's just agree to disagree, after all, we're both doing the Lord's work, you in your way, and I in His..."

Not as corrupt as the big ones: E.g. xfce.

"That would be an ecumenical matter"

Yes!

Are those my feet?

There is, at least, a written standard. Very few churches actually read it, however, and some (ex. Catholics) created their own.

Even if they all agreed, there'd still be two standards - the God one and the No-God one.

At an estimate, it looks like there are around five to six thousand settings: a combination of binary choices, numeric, and text entry - with absolutely no reference to what any of the choices do (in the config page).

Some of them can be deduced; one can at least guess what area others are in; but there's nothing to indicate where (under what general heading) one might seek a particular function, or even if it exists. And what's with some of the entries being in bold face?

Not really criticising Mozilla here, but this is a good example of a poor settings UI.

Some of them can be deduced; one can at least guess what area others are in; but there's nothing to indicate where (under what general heading) one might seek a particular function, or even if it exists.

Not only that, but there are setting Firefox software responds to that don't exist in the defaults, so you have to know they exist and how to create them yourself.

Not really criticising Mozilla here

We should.

Given the three choices, I'd rank them best to worst:

about:config

android settings

Windows settings.

I've never used iSettings.

Android has fewer items to manage and is newer, but it's still been better managed than Windows.

Except that Android settings vary from one phone to another, again between Android versions and I'm sure depending upon the day of the week.

You deserve my upvote for "depending upon the day of the week."

<< depending on the day of the week >>

With Windows it depends on the second in the day. The Windows UI changes more often than a "whores drawers", as they say.

I agree that about:config is a poor UI, but I think it's a great DI (Developer Interface) :-D

It strikes me as something that some developer added as a quick & dirty way to change settings on the fly and got left in because it is undeniably useful, at least if you have the right magical incantations to hand!

And what's with some of the entries being in bold face?

I think that’s used to denote items that have been changed (by you, or plugins, or whatever) from their defaults.

My router (an Asus) has a nice, fairly easy to use graphical interface. I've been happy with it except for one section: The Traditional QoS settings. They're well layed-out, fairly clear on their intended purpose, but don't actually do anything. At all. I suspect the code (or chip?) that actually does QoS isn't present in that model, but the settings are!

Oh, unhappy about another section - that you have to agree to a "we own your data" EULA to use some of the "built-in" features. (I said no.)

I think we're ignoring frequency. I've used Firefox's config less than a dozen times in the past decade.

That's why I like it the best of all of them.

I use it on a basis of "how do I (or even can I) unfuck the latest release?" i.e. at least monthly.

Not needed any more, nor standards for that reason.

AI agents will soon take over and they'll know how to handle things.

They could even learn to make tea!

They could probably learn to make something that's almost, but entirely, unlike tea.

A few whooshes there.

AI screwing up everything ? Surely Hollyweird have a movie for that scenario.

Off topic and not wishing to appear pedantic (though I probably will): whilst the "2001: A Space Odyssey" screenplay was co-written by Kubrick and Clarke, the "Kubrickian monolith" was based on an Arthur C Clarke short story "The Sentinel". I speak as someone who was raised on the novels of Clarke (Asimov coming a close second); I also had the same science teacher as Clarke, so I apologise if I come across as a bit defensive...

But The Sentinel was a pyramid (another example of carcinisationism - it's a really convenient way to stack rocks) whereas the 1:4:9 monolith first appeared in 2001.

Just checked, my mobile phone is a 1:7:15 monolith. Not at all Kubrickian.

Just brickian, if you're not careful.

I have the movie action figure... with 0 points of articulation.

If it doesn't have Kung Fu Grip, it's not worth it.

"Preferred text size and style, icon size and spacing, good and bad color combinations, language - if a machine could pick that up from your phone"

Why would I want the same text size on my desktop that I have on the small screen my phone? Icon size? etc etc.

"if cars didn't have a standard control layout"

You have to be joking! What standard? There's mostly a steering wheel, and mostly some pedals, and often some stalks but what the stalks do vary notoriously between cars. But how do you start your car? How do you open the doors? How do you control the radio? etc etc ....

That would be an ecumenical matter.

I understood it as your preferred settings, for various display types, would be stored in your phone so that you can easily import your settings to whatever device/app you are using.