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Always Bet on Text (2014)

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Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#221

Post by robenkleene »

koonsolo wrote: post #148
robenkleene wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia's List of codecs page ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_codecs ) is a good example of the explosion of complexity that arises when representing media digitally. To this day, this complexity is still mostly offloaded to users in the form of export settings, and supported playback formats. One basic requirement of the technology reaching the point good media support is if a user never encounters codecs,…

My kids have no idea what a codec is. Still they record and play videos and audio messages all the time. I don't know in which world or time you are living, it's been a long time since I touch anything related to codecs.

This is a fair point, there's a lot you can get away without worrying about the complexity today, and that amount is certainly steadily growing (which is great!).

But particularly on the creation side, if you say, try and combine a vector created in one program with a bitmap created in another, you'll likely encounter some issues (e.g., color profiles), or taking an animation created in one program and overlaying it over a video in another, you'll often need to know your codecs. Or exporting a video optimized for social media, e.g., videos shared on Instagram and Twitter often have heavy compression artifacts.

I'm really looking for seamless creation and sharing freely combining media from different programs, with the same ease as cut, pasting, and editing text. (As well as interfaces that are as easy to use as manipulating pen and paper with your hands.)

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#222

Post by eat_veggies »

mantap wrote: post #203
soapdog wrote: post #196

It really depends on what you define as text. Does it involve special notations such as math? Can it involve diagrams? If all you mean is prose, as writing sentences in whatever native language you speak, then I must respectfully disagree with the OP. Yes, text is marvelous. I'm an author of multiple books and have a passion for the written word, but there are things for which there are better ways to convey informat…

I would draw the line like this. Text is anything you can represent using Unicode. Source code is text. Emoji are text. Some simple math expressions are text, but more complicated ones involving specialist layout rules are not. Architecture plans, no way.

That's a reasonable but exactly backwards way of looking at it. Indeed, Unicode captures a wide range of what we consider text, but text is not Unicode. There are languages with symbols that Unicode can't represent but they are still text -- to claim otherwise is to erase them.

Something closer to a definition of text is parts of their criteria for encoding symbols [1] but even that is imperfect.

[1] https://www.unicode.org/pending/symbol-guidelines.html

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#223

Post by crispyambulance »

dragonwriter wrote: post #94
crispyambulance wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing about XML is that it was explicitly conceived to solve problems of representing, translating and transmitting component models and configuration. The sad thing is that it was abused, horribly, in the early naughts when people tried to take it too far. On the one hand it was rushed out without the proper tooling and you had humans typing raw xml without the right amount of support from intelligent auto…

> XML still survives, though. The tooling is good. If you type XAML or HTML in the right editors, it's serves the purpose competently and without drama. HTML isn't XML, though XML was inspired by HTML and HTML has an XML serialization. IIRC, some or all of the versions of XAML aren't, strictly, XML either, merely XML-derivedl0

It's close enough. There are only a limited number differences that exist for good reasons.

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#224

Post by admax88q »

numlock86 wrote: post #93

Apples and oranges. The post states that the used Twitter logo PNG is 4000 bytes, while it's only 723. Try to express that logo in text, English language and in all its details with 723 characters, so you are able to reproduce a pixel perfect representation. Not even possible with 4000 characters anyway. Don't bother. Text will be ambiguous, unless you describe every single detail. If the target is to communicate "Tw…

That's a biased comparison. Obviously an image is better at communicating an image. By setting the goalposts at "pixel perfect recreation" you've already selected a winner.

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#225

Post by robenkleene »

mannykannot wrote: post #147
robenkleene wrote: post #88

The question is whether these advantages are because text is a better communication medium, or because of the limitations of our technology? Take using a computer to type a word versus draw a picture: Effectively everyone who uses a computer can type a word, but I'd bet less than 10% could draw a circle. But put a piece of paper in front of someone and effectively everyone can draw a circle. This points to there bein…

It is not plausible that, but for the limitations of technology, you could substitute a picture for the argument presented in your post.

I don't disagree, I think some ideas are better expressed as text others by other forms of media. E.g., that's why we use graphs, diagrams, storyboards, flowcharts, etc... in addition to text to communicate.

For the record, I came up with this thought, about computers and software being optimized for text, by realizing I learned the best by reading information presented as a combination of text and media (e.g., a textbook with diagrams), but when I communicate with a computer, I always just use text, why? Well, making media with a computer is a huge PITA, I'm assuming because you program the computer itself with text, so its entire interface seems optimized for that. (This is particularly interesting looking in contrast to smartphones and tablets, which are entirely not optimized for text.)

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#226

Post by Jtsummers »

cycomanic wrote: post #114
koonsolo wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah come on, this is not accurate at all. We have tons of tech now: audio, video, charting, etc. Circles are pretty easy in powerpoint or any such software. The tech is obviously here already. But still, why do people prefer sending chat texts instead of calling or video calling? Surely not because of tech.

Actually I would argue that people send texts despite it often being highly inefficient. It often takes an infuriating amount of text messages to agree on something that would only take a 2min call. It's just we're so used to sending chats.

This is why my default is text until a call becomes obviously better. "Where do you want to go for dinner?" ten messages of hemming and hawing, "Call me when you're free". A call forces an interruption on the person, or a game of phone tag. Texting can be answered when each person is able, and can be used to coordinate the call.

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#227

Post by Karunamon »

jameshart wrote: post #216
hrishi wrote: post #14

Agreed, with a counterpoint: Text is efficient at transmitting data. If I want to describe a concept or an event, text is king. However, media is more efficient at transmitting sentiment. It will take you far more than 4000 bytes of text to transmit the feeling or emotion an icon can convey, when used well. This is why we've (as a species) started using emojis, and why media leans to emotion and sentiment while text…

“Text is efficient at transmitting data. If I want to describe a concept or an event, text is king.” Really? Why are video games so visual, in that case? To update you on the situation your character is in, inform you where the enemies are, give you feedback on your current health and objectives... most video games use a rich graphical system of colors and symbols overlaid over a high resolution image of the game wor…

Because games are optimized for immersion and being roughly analogous to reality, not for efficiency of describing events. That would be the purpose of a news article. Pictures are included, but text is the focus.

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#229

Post by duckerude »

mantap wrote: post #203
soapdog wrote: post #196

It really depends on what you define as text. Does it involve special notations such as math? Can it involve diagrams? If all you mean is prose, as writing sentences in whatever native language you speak, then I must respectfully disagree with the OP. Yes, text is marvelous. I'm an author of multiple books and have a passion for the written word, but there are things for which there are better ways to convey informat…

I would draw the line like this. Text is anything you can represent using Unicode. Source code is text. Emoji are text. Some simple math expressions are text, but more complicated ones involving specialist layout rules are not. Architecture plans, no way.

Unicode is not quite the right place for the line, I think. Cypro-Minoan is text (but not currently part of unicode). ASCII art is not text.

Linearity is part of it. Source code and emoji and simple math expressions can be seen as a linear stream of "characters" (defined loosely), even on a fundamental level. An architectural plan could be transliterated into a linear form, but that would be a transformation.

Of course then you need to explain why audio doesn't count as text. Discreteness? Ease of faithful reproduction?

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