Xref: utzoo alt.hypertext:826 comp.cog-eng:1930 comp.graphics:17086 comp.multimedia:293 comp.software-eng:5276 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!amdcad!jetsun!pyramid!athertn!hemlock!mcgregor From: mcgregor@hemlock.Atherton.COM (Scott McGregor) Newsgroups: alt.hypertext,comp.cog-eng,comp.graphics,comp.multimedia,comp.software-eng Subject: Re: Images vs. Text Message-ID: <34980@athertn.Atherton.COM> Date: 6 Apr 91 03:34:18 GMT References: <1991Apr2.180348.19733@smsc.sony.com> <1991Apr02.235121.17834@convex.com> Sender: news@athertn.Atherton.COM Reply-To: mcgregor@hemlock.Atherton.COM (Scott McGregor) Followup-To: alt.hypertext Distribution: na Organization: Atherton Technology -- Sunnyvale, CA Lines: 155 In article , jpenny@ms.uky.edu (Jim Penny) writes: > people would insist on writing primarily in a foreign language. > It is as if all Europeans still wrote only in church Latin. No, Japanese use only an icon set from China, not a foreign language. Many Europeans still write with the *Latin* character set. Others use a Greek character set or a mixture of the two. The Russians aren't using foreign languages when they use Cyrillic, but they are traditional ways of making marks which were introduced with other languages. The same is true for Japanese iconography. > First, I know of no culture that willing converted from an >alphabetic representation to a pictographic one. The accepted form for writing has often changed with the conquerors preferences. In the indian penisula and in Africa, there are places where writing styles have changed multiple times. The examples given below are merely selected from more recent history when European cultures impressed themselves upon Asian cultures. > Second, >there are many cultures that have partially or completly changed >from pictographic to alphabetic representations, these include >Korea (partially), and Vietnam. > For defenders of the Chinese writing system I have three questions: > 1) how many characters are in use today in written Chinese? > 2) how many characters were in use 1000 years ago in written Chines? > 3) If Chinese writing is inherently simpler than an alphabetic systems, > how is this trend to be explained? In general the number of words has expanded over time, if for no other reason than due to new inventions. New words often derive from compounding of old forms, from metaphors, and other forms of catecresis. Since Chinese words often map to a single icon, it should not be surprising that more Chinese icons are in existance today. Nor should it be surprising that in common english typography, accents, and other diacritical marks not typical in earlier english typography are now more frequently used due to adoption of words from other languages which do use them frequently. > 1) It is not clear that Chinese characters are pictures in the sense the > original poster intended. If they are considered to be pictures, > then it is not clear that a word written in an alphabetic language > is not a picture. Very true. I agree with most of the other comments (excised above) that stated that pictograph languages were not inherently easier to teach or use. > 2) If pictures are inherently superior, consider the following series > of questions: > a) I will select at random a word from the dictionary: > you may draw as many pictures as you would like, but no letters, > to convey that word to a third party. Will this be easy? > b) I will select at random a word from the dictionary; > you may draw as many letters as you want to convey the word to > a third party. Will this be easy? This is not the antithesis of a. A more correct antithesis is I show you a picture, choose one word and see if the listener draws the same picture I showed you. This is also a parlor game, though not one played very often any more, largely because of arguments concerning whether the drawings are identical enough. This says something about both skills in drawing vs. recognizing pictures, and also about precision of identity in pictures vs. words. c) Which of scenerios a and b are a parlor game? As I pointed out above, some of the parlor game aspect has to do with average people's (in)abilities to draw well quickly. Consider also that many people play a variant of dictionary in which a word is chosen, and everyone writes a definition. The word selector reads all the definitions, including the one from the dictionary, and people have to guess which one actually came from the dictionary. Note that this is essentially a strictly verbal game (neither alphabetic nor pictographic) but challenging nontheless. Which brings us to the final point: Neither pictures nor verbal (neither oral nor textual) processing can be held to be superior in all cases. Rather the most superior selection is a function of the skills of the sender of the communication, the skills of the receivers of the communication, and the conventional means for communicating the chosen subject matter in the chosen medium, place and time. Now, on a related topic, P.T Cox and T. Pietzykowski wrote in Proeedings International Computer Science Conference, 1988, pp 695-704, Using a Pictorial Representation to Combine Dataglow and Object Orientation in a Language Independent Programming Mechanism. "The standard textual representation of programming languages has many shorcomings, such as the abstract syntax inherited from Indo-European languages, enforced sequentiality, the necessity for variables, and the confusion between logical and mnemonic information... The use of a pictorial representaion for programming is proposed as a means for overcoming all of these shortcomings, incorporating the powerful features of AI languages and removing the bias towards Indo-European languages, making programming equallly accessible to users whose natural language relies on ideograms, such as Chinese... " The proliferation of microcomputers in the last decade has highlighted an important problem in the production of software, a problem normally referred to as "Chineese computing". Existing Algol-like programming languages, for long time the primary tool of software development, are intimately connected with the linguistic roots of Indo-European languages, based on a small symbolic alphabet and intricate syntax using punctuation symbols. Such languages are alien to programmers whose natural languages are rooted in the Chinese ideographic language paradigm. Lisp and Prolog rely less heavily on the syntactic conventions of Indo_European langauges, however, they do rely fundamentally on the concept of "variable", a meaninglyess symbol that represents some unknown object. Languages based on ideograms can express only meaningful concepts, so variables are unnatural in such langaugaes... "...[A] pictorial formalism...[is defined which] completely avoid[s] variables and the symbolic syntax inherited from Indo-European languages. The result is a powerful universal programming language which is equally accessible to users from all linguistic backgrounds... "The greatest shortcoming of all text based programming languages... are variables.Variables used to represent data in programming languages originated from logic, shich again stems from Indo-European languages. The special property of a vairable is that it is a symbol used to represent some unknown object. This concept is most natural in languages in which new entities can be constructed from smaller meaningless symbols (alphabet) that impose no meaning on the new entity. By contrast, languages based on ideograms can express only meaninglful concepts, so it is impossible to introduce a new sumbol that represents some unkonwn object. The existence of variables therefore make programming languages much less intuitive for those whose natural languages is ideographic such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean." Questions for readers: 1) Is, as is the authors claimed above, a pictorial programming language "*equally* acssible to users from all linguistic backgrounds"? Or does it skew the field the other way (i.e. against Indo-European language users)? 2) Is the concept of a variable really more difficult to users of ideographic language users? How are other mathematical uses of variables taught? Does mathematical literacy negate this alleged deficit? 3) If the availability of meaningless strings is the key to use of variables, why is it so important to choose meaningful names for variables instead of nonsense or conventionally meaningless names such as "X"? 4) Would you like to use such a pictographic programming language? Why or why not? Inquiring minds want to know... Scott McGregor