Comment by Ygg2
11 years ago
I did some research on textual vs graphical representation for my master. According to that research (not on my comp so I can't reference it) - one of main advantages of text is a near universal set of symbols (like Ascii for images), more constrained relationships (images are 2D while text is essentially 1D).
Most of text is 2D. What is usually regarded as text is just a collection of simplified and arranged 2D symbols. What is usually regarded as a picture is collection of unarranged non-simplified 2D symbols. 1D text would be more like morse code.
I didn't meant as a visual reprentation. Text no matter how well formatted/displayed will only flow in one direction* (be it up-down/down-up and left-to-right/right-to-left). In a picture you have no such constraints. Thus a picture is harder to scan by humans and machines alike. It takes expert knowledge to tune out some of distractions of visual representation.
* Exception being texts that are deformed to instill a sense of confusion and to simply play with how text looks like. Or possibly some really obscure non-European writing system that writes non-linearly.
Interesting. Do you have a paper you can link to?
Sorry, for the delay, here are some papers I read for that:
The research I cited about lack of standard vocabulary of Symbols (like ASCII for text) comes from work that is not in English, and I can't find a version online. It makes intuitive and logical sense. A true visual language would parse images and have a standard sense of what symbols it may encounter.