[IAEP] Abacus suggestions

[Yoshiki Ohshima]

At Sun, 9 Oct 2011 15:11:24 -0400,
Walter Bender wrote:
> 
> On Sun, Oct 9, 2011 at 12:29 AM, Yoshiki Ohshima <yoshiki at vpri.org> wrote:
> > For the first time I launched Abacus activity today.  My impression is
> > biased as I am Japanese and learned a version of it at school, but
> > here is some suggestions:
> >
> >  - The graphics lacks essential "dots".  You see some dots in this
> >    picture for example: http://kamedake.com/_src/sc946/DSC_1976.jpg.
> >    These are "period" and "commas".  The big white two dots means the
> >    it is 1's digit.  The smaller dots on the bar are put every 3
> >    digits; even though the Japanese writing system would work better
> >    with comma's every 4 digits, we conceeded to westerners.  In any
> >    case, missing these dots was the first surprise for me.
> 
> Would it make sense then to let the user move the dots left and right
> depending upon where they want the 1s digit? Or is it always in the
> same place?

  Unless we are to invent a new scheme, I'd keep these dots at the
same place.  But this could be a conservable opinion...

-- Yoshiki