Comment by antod

2 days ago

It predates EGA. Most/all 8bit BASIC systems were top left, and they got it from somewhere earlier. Spreadsheets are top left, as are lots of other apps graphical or otherwise. The web (CSS, SVG etc). OpenGL etc etc.

CRTs scanned downwards, most people read downwards.

I would say that nearly everything in the real world (outside math) especially computer related uses top left as an origin.

1 comment

antod

Sweepi 1 day ago

> I would say that nearly everything in the real world (outside math) especially computer related uses top left as an origin.

I concede that point, its not want to meant, but I did express my point poorly.

  My point is:
  - A lot of things work like books[1]: top-left to bottom-right
  - However, 99+ % of graphs (anything from revenue numbers to health data) in all mediums (books, newspapers, websites) use a bottom-left origin. Never seen a revenue bar growing from top to bottom. In fact, I dont remember the last time i have seen a graph not using the I. Quadrant. Do you?
  - D3.js (imo) is a lib to create graphs from data, but does not abstract this problem away? Why?

[1] "western/latin"-style books ofc