Nigd3 - it doesn't matter how long ABN has been the abbreviation for "abnormal" the fact is a crew got it wrong on the day. 3 pointer altimeters used to be standard, they are not any more for good reason. I think a number of abbreviations should go the same way. If the EICAS screen isn't big enough to write the full caption, then make the screen bigger! It is much less of a problem nowadays where computer memory is not so very limited as it was. We have 511 mile limits on our range rings because of 512 KB limits on the data point, with modern aircraft this should no longer be an issue.
With Russian and Western AI's, I know what you mean, but what you see on the instrument and what you see outside are opposite. I can't see how that helps, although I am interested to hear other people's views as I am sure they will be interesting and make me re-evaluate my opinion. In my brain, the perception is that the Russian AI's are in the wrong sense - if my training had been different then maybe that wouldn't be true however.
IanP has made me think of something. I love the dial ASI on the 757, with manually moveable bugs and rolling numbers. The rolling numbers are great for seeing a trend, the needle also. Having bugs you can see all the time helps in giving a good gross error check. I used to fly an aircraft with a speed tape and I still find the dial and rolling numbers much better. The speed bugs on the tape used to disappear "up" the tape and only become visible as you went faster. Even though the bug and the number it was set to appeared when you set it, there was no visual cross check until you were barreling along the runway. I believe this was a factor in the Singapore Airlines tailscrape. With our ASI you can see just by looking whether the bugs are in a reasonable place and whether they are set for Flap 5, 15 or 20 takeoffs as the distance between the bottom bug and the next one gets bigger the larger the number of the flaps you use. Its helped me catch errors before.
Appearing numbers are next to useless (tell Honda!), rolling numbers are great. No trend in the first, plenty of trend in the second.
BTW my "students" (really the public) in the sim are looking at the outside screen, not the AI when they say it is "backwards".