Re: Non-linear full-2d writing (again)

I've picked up Harpelan again, a little bit, and I'm slowly refurbishing
the morphology and lexicon. (I'm still nomail.)

> * how to have sememes that overlap or intertwine?
Sort of a case study: I haven't done much of this in Harpelan, with the
exception of some outside/inside pairings.  In my case, I've found the
results aesthetically unpleasing.  The exception is Harpelan verbs, which
comprise a small and closed set (currently numbering seven) that take
affixes to mark modality, intent, and auxiliary verbs.  All the verbs have
approximately a square or pentagonal shape and have a large blank space in
the middle -- this gives them reference points so that sememes can be lined
up consistently; even so, there's quite a few not-quite-fits that become
special cases.  In all, it's hard to make characters that are visually
distinct on their own, yet have a common set of reference points to align
with other characters.

It's also a challenge to make it so that the individual sememes are still
recognizable after overlapping.  Currently, I don't see individual sememes
in verbs.  Instead, I see first the density of features, which tells me how
many sememes are there, and then specific distinguishing features such as
"equals sign" double lines that are characteristic of particular sememes.

> * how to have the 'web' interconnected at higher-order levels (e.g.
> paragraph plus)?
That's what names are for =)

There's a graphical programming language called "Labview" where, instead of
typing programs, you draw them by laying down boxes (which represent
function calls or structured control flow), and connecting the outputs of
boxes to the inputs of other boxes.  Labview has this wire clutter problem:
for modest to large size programs, one ends up spending more and more time
adjusting the wires that connect different boxes together so that the
program is readable.  I think this is kind of an intrinsic problem with
graphical writing; if you want to connect related things together, you're
going to get wire clutter as the text gets larger.  The solution is to name
things that are not local to a small area.  I'd like to hear any solutions
others come up with.

--Noktakanto

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