Re: The "best" system of writing

Gary Shannon wrote:
>1. Of first importance (to me) is reading efficiency. A thing written once
>can
>be read again and again, so the ease and quickness with which it can be
>read
>outweighs the ease of writing.
>
>2. It should be relatively compact, without sacrificing readability. If the
>same novel can be printed in one writing system on 30% fewer pages than
>with
>another writing system, then the eye can scan it 30% faster, and 30% fewer
>trees need to be cut down to make paper.
>
>Any other criteria are, to me, of negliable significance and can be
>ignored.
Do you mean to exclude ease of learning explicitely or implicitely? Because
you could take this approach to its extreme and have different symbols for
the 5 million most common sentences + individual word diacritics to deal
with the rest... Then the writing system will be virtually impossible to
learn, but it *would* be ridiculously efficient for a hypothetical fully
taught reader. It's of no use if no fully taught readers exist, however.

The fully taught writer would also probably not be all that efficient; to
think up 5 million maximally distinct glyphs, you'd probably have to resort
to means such as color, texture, 3D shape, odor...

....I'd take my argument further, but I have to go now.

John Vertical

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