> Sai Emrys wrote:
>
> >> So here came my idea. Whenever a non-linear writing system should be
> >> invented, why should it absolutely reproduces all the flaws of the linear
> >> system? Our visual cortex is capable of deciphering more that a word at a time.
> [---CUT---]
>
> > *nodnod* I wonder how you could take advantage of psych / cogsci /
> > perception research to optimize for this...
> >
> > Ideas?
>
> I was thinking about real pictures but even if a picture is better than 1000
> words, some words are also better 1000 pictures. "Freedom", "Thoughts",
> "Conlang" are the first 3 examples that come to my mind.
>
> Logograms/Ideograms could be really good but also very hermetic. And it
> makes you feel like an Egyptian when it comes to proper names... Unless you
> create a unique logogram for yourself.
>
> That's why I used words. I couldn't find anything better. Words are obvious.
>
> >> So, a semagram is no more than a few words the one above the other which can
> >> be read at once, almost like a picture, as a whole. Thus, the semagrams are
> >> the symbols and the words are their atomic components. We don't need more.
> [---CUT---]
>
> > Strongly *dis*agreed. "A few words one above the other" is an
> > extremely linear concept. If you're going to treat them as a whole,
> > why not fuse them 2d, or even in a completely overlapping /
> > integrating fashion? Why keep the bounds of the constituent atoms and
> > then string those along?
>
> Yes and no. I said "A few words one above the other" because it's a
> convenient way to write them but that's of no importance. What matters is
> that these few words describe a mental image *together.* That's why I used a
> framing around my semagrams; it fuses the atomic words in a whole.
>
> >> If you haven't room enough, you just add a third dimension thanks to a
> >> hyper-semagram... well... a hyperlink just like on any HTML page. (We're
> >> living in a computerized world, ain't we?)
>
> > Mm. I find that such things tend to be difficult for me to parse /
> > chunk, though - ones that rely on hyperlinks. Tend to get lost and not
> > have a sitemap, nor the ability to have a "zoomed-out" view of the
> > situation.
>
> So do I. I was also thinking of adding a 3rd dimenstion (depth) when there
> isn't enough room left in the 2D plane. I actually had another idea in mind
> but I found it too hard to explain... until your semagram "zoomed-out view"
> unleashed my mind.
>
> Instead of laying the semagrams along lines and columns, you can zoom in a
> semagram to see the semagrams connected to it and the "upper level" is
> spread around the zooming area so you can zoom out or zoom in another
> semagram from the "upper level".
>
> So, a whole book is contained in a single semagram, you zoom in to access
> the chapter-semagrams, in which you can zoom to acess the content-semagrams,
> then details, then details related to details... and so on. Then the 2D text
> looks more like a tree with nodes, branches and leaves. You always have a
> general view and a detailed view where you zoom in. I think that would be
> closer from our way of thinking: a general "view" i.e. the object of our
> thoughts and a detailed view of what we set our "mental focus" on.
>
> >> BUT this is no kind of writing system that can you read aloud. You can only
> >> read it for yourself then tell what you read with your own words. Speech has
> >> only one dimension so any non-linear writing system can logically only have
> >> an indirect relation with it.
>
> > Not really. Any graph or tree can be linearized; it's just a
> > one-to-many relation. You'd also have to add salt in order to recover
> > the broken links, but that's doable. Probably not in a cognitively
> > easy way for a human, though, so you could consider that to be
> > effectively lost data.
>
> I think that losing data is the only purpose of a 2D writing system: To lose
> datas that are unncessary for the reader to understand. Our linear writing
> system is so much full of superfluous data that we can get bored by a text
> on a subject that however interests us. Personnaly, when I read, I spend
> more time dreaming in between the lines than actually reading. I'm in a deep
> need of another writing system. ;-)
>
> > That does beg the question, though, of how much you could screw with
> > it so as to render it not just nonlinear, but *nonlinearizable*...
> > *hmmmmmmmm*...
>
> That's absolutely impossible. We already "linearize" our everyday 4D
> universe every time we speak. 2D is flatter(more flat?) than 4D... So
> whatever the number of dimensions, we can reduce them to only one: speech.
>
> > (Your story, btw, showed in my gmail [via both Firefox and IE] as a
> > formatted table, but without lines of any kind - just cells. Was that
> > the intended appearance?)
>
> All the cells are supposed to be framed with a black square of which one or
> two sides may be thicker to separate the "branches". I guess Gmail scrambles
> HTML pages with inline CSS. It appears correctly as a real mail with
> Mozilla-Mail and also correctly as a stand-alone page with Mozilla,
> Konqueror, Firefox and Opera. Gmail is to blame.
>
> I'd suggest you get the page from the list archives:
>
>
http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0505b&L=conlang&F=&S=&P=703
>
> A++
>
> --
> ==================
> Remi Villatel
> maxilys_@_tele2.fr
> ==================
>