Re: [piecepack] Greetings and hello!

[Karl von Laudermann <karlvonl@...>]

On Monday, April 29, 2002, at 03:01  AM, odbo255 wrote:

> *making the usage of the ace symbol consistent (always a spiral or
> always the suit [still mulling the consequences of this one over])

If I may comment on this, I think it would be a good idea for the ace to 
be consistent as well. A suit symbol would be the wrong choice, because 
that of course ruins the ace coins' ability to hide their suit when 
viewing the value side. Having ace tiles have a suit in the corner and an 
ace symbol in the center is preferable to the alternative of having coins 
which have a suit symbol on both sides. Heck, I think the ace tiles would 
look better that way.

However, I don't like the spiral as an ace symbol. The spiral is an 
arbitrary graphical shape, just like the four suit symbols are, so when 
you first dump your piecepack onto the table and start to sort out the 
coins, the value-side-up ace coins look like suit-side-down coins, 
especially when you are a piecepack novice. Since your brain processes 
written characters differently from meaningless shapes, it would be easier 
to visually distinguish the value-side coins from the suit-side coins if 
the ace were a character, such as an "A".

I would hesitate to suggest any functional changes to the piecepack, so 
what I propose above is merely cosmetic. But IMHO would be a decent 
improvement in readability of the piecepack.

--
				Karl J. von Laudermann
				karlvonl@...
				http://www.geocities.com/~karlvonl/
				Richard's PBeM Server ID: karlvonl