51–60 of 136 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mostly for space-efficiency. See http://dotsies.org for a better description.
Dotsies aren't all that space-efficient, though, when compared to regular old text. For example, in this comparison: http://i.imgur.com/Ldd70.png I'd argue that the text on the right, in the green font, is just as readable as the dotsies, while taking up less space.
Why not stack Morse code horizontally? At least Morse code is somewhat designed to take advantage of the frequency distribution of letters (e.g., e is a single dot.)
So... if I want the single letter 'B' by itself, it looks exactly the same as the letters A, C, D or E? In other words, 'DE' look exactly the same, without any reference, as 'AB', and there is a haphazard set of similar combinations? I'm not doing that. Learn Braille instead.
Reading individual single characters where vertical spacing is your only key, with no reference, or even with some, especially the single dot versions, could be troublesome. Also uncommon (except in programming - but I think of this as more a novel way to read prose than code)
Also - standalone letters tend to be capitalized - and those have a reference bar above them... so it's not all bad.
Still - good point.
Learn braille,good idea. I'd go with learn ASL (sign?) as another suggestion too.... though this dotsie thing is definitely thought provoking (on the reading side - not the chording/typing side - that's pointless)
Generally, though, if something's going to be read by both, you may as well just have a label with plain English + a QR code. No reason why it has to be readable by both.
This seems like it could actually be a real improvement on written Latin if it adopted a real phonetic alphabet. Just transposing all of my existing graphemes for new, smaller ones seems a little silly. (And since what you're really asking is not for people to learn a new alphabet, but to learn a new symbol for every word in their lexicon, it wouldn't be that much more of a leap. Think about it.) Thinking about it--…
A binary representation of the Hangul system could be very interesting. Use the symbol 1 for "vowel base" and +1 for "high", +2 for "high front", +3 for "high back"… You could eventually have each byte represent a syllable. It'd be like chmod commands + phonetics.
There goes my evening…
This seems like it could actually be a real improvement on written Latin if it adopted a real phonetic alphabet. Just transposing all of my existing graphemes for new, smaller ones seems a little silly. (And since what you're really asking is not for people to learn a new alphabet, but to learn a new symbol for every word in their lexicon, it wouldn't be that much more of a leap. Think about it.) Thinking about it--…
That's exactly what steganographers do, and they go further along by condensing syllabes, words or even phrases in a single chord. Pretty amazing, although it seems a lot harder than this, and not as good for reading.
So... if I want the single letter 'B' by itself, it looks exactly the same as the letters A, C, D or E? In other words, 'DE' look exactly the same, without any reference, as 'AB', and there is a haphazard set of similar combinations? I'm not doing that. Learn Braille instead.
think differently. right now our brain processes letter by letter, with dotsies it will become symbol by symbol. i'm reading it for some time, haven't had that difficulty. there will always be letters next to it anyway, easy to see the base, if you have to.
Chinese people don't read line by line, they read paragraph by paragraph. Chinese has the advantage of reading very fast, and in fewer length[1]. The drawbacks however, are much larger character set (which results in higher illiteracy), and slightly slower writing speed.
But English/Romantic languages are not best suited for symbolic reading, because there are declensions. In Chinese, do-did-done are the same words. Every meaning is concluded by the context.
[1]: http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/03/daily-c...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This looks much better. I'll report back when I'm done reading.
Cool. Curious if others like this style better than the original link also.
Why not stack Morse code horizontally? At least Morse code is somewhat designed to take advantage of the frequency distribution of letters (e.g., e is a single dot.)
It has been done: http://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/58144
I get asked this a lot, so I threw this together just now.