Re: Non-linear / full-2d writing systems?

This thread is covering several points now. Below I reply to H.S. Teoh &
Sai concerning voxels, 3d chess & stories in non-linear 2d writing.
Replies to other points are in separate emails.

[VOXELS]
On Thursday, May 12, 2005, at 08:01 , H. S. Teoh wrote:

> On Thu, May 12, 2005 at 06:33:47PM +0100, Ray Brown wrote:
> [...]
>> voxels? I assume -els is 'elements' just as it is in pixels. But what is
>> the vox- ? Looks like Latin for "voice". If so, there's another
>> difference
>> between your HST's schemes ans Sai's as I understand it.
>
> "Voxel" is the comp. sci. term for 3D "pixels", the vo- being derived
> from "volume", and the /x/ is just a gratuitous false analogy with
> 'pixel'.
I see - not IMO the best of coinages - to us Brits it sounds like a make
of car/ automobile (Vauxhall :)

On Thursday, May 12, 2005, at 09:08 , Sai Emrys wrote:
[snip]
> Oy. What he means is having 3d *pixels* rather than 3d *surfaces*. So
> something in this language woud be a bunch of dots hanging in space.
I understood that - but I wondered why he had coined the term 'voxel' for
one of the dots. I associated vox- with Latin 'uox' and wondered if he saw
these dots hanging in space as represented vocalic phenomena.  I now know
that I must associate vo- with 'volume', -x- with nothing (the unknown
factor?) and -el with element  :)

We live and learn.

> While I agree that this is "more 3d" than my conception (of bounded
> surfaces), I think he's also right in that we wouldn't be able to
> understand very easily. :-P
I agree.
==================================================================

[3D CHESS]
[H.s. Teoh]
>> Fair enough - but how is that different from 3d chess, which you seem to
>> have dismissed as not really 3d? One plays standard chess on a 8 x 8 grid
>> of 64 cells. Presumably, that is accepted as fully 2d? So if one plays on
>> a grid of 8 x 8 x 8 cells (or even something simpler like the 8 x 8 x 5
>> game) how is that not fully 3d? _All_ the 512 (or 384) cells are fully
>> usable, and the threats posed by different pieces certainly intertwine.
>
> Mea culpa. You're right, 3D chess is indeed fully 3D in the sense that
> the threats posed by different pieces do indeed intertwine in a 3D
> way.
OK

[snip]
> This is rather irrelevant, of course, but I was distracted in thinking
> from the POV of a 4D being playing 3D chess on his/its table, in which
> case he'd be able to see the innards of the 3D pieces and not merely
> the surfaces.
I have seen chess sets where the pieces are made of glass  :)
=========================================

[STORIES IN 2D WRITING]
[H.S. Teoh]
[snip]]
>> Sounds similar to the idea I put forward when I wrote:
>> " Would it not be possible for the punchline only to be conceptualized
>> when the person has a full grasp of the whole 2d presentation? Forming
>> the
>> story from the 2d representation would be perhaps a process like Platonic
>> dialectic. When this is complete the punchline comes like the 'blinding
>> flash of enlightenment' that Plato seems to think will be the
>> philosopher'
>> s reward for following the dialectic path"
>
> Yep, that's what I was driving at.
[Sai]
> ... which, btw, is exactly what I mean also. Except way better phrased. ;
> -)
Thanks - we all seem to be heading the same way  :)

[Back to H.S. Teoh]
>> But surely 'challenge' and 'solution' imply temporal sequencing, do they
>> not? If there's no (or very little) time between the challenge and the
>> solution, then there's hardly any puzzle, metaphoric or otherwise, and
>> hence hardly any story.
>
> That's true. It does assume that the reader parses chunks of the
> writing over time.
Surely many readers will wish to do just that. I like to read a chapter or
two in bed before I settle down each night. I've just spent a couple of
weeks or so reading Umberto Eco's "The Island of the Day Before". I wouldn'
t have wanted to read it all in one go - chunking was much more
satisfactory.

> I guess the difference is that the order in which
> the reader does this is no longer under the control of the author,
> unlike in a "linear" novel.
That's an interesting thought  :)

Ray
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ray.brown@freeuk.com
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Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason."      [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]