🚀 go-pugleaf

> Mike Adams schrieb in Nachricht <374832BC.907601ED@uaf.edu>...
> Since computers are digital, and visual versus verbal (atleast until
recenrly).
> Why not have the middle lingo be one of visual means.. I know said this
before,
> but not to all the NG this email will be going to..


It is of course possible to use pictograms instead of typed words.
As long as there is a 1 : 1 relationship between the two representations
theoretically nothing changes.

But practically there is a big difference:

For some symbols it may be indeed a good idea to use pictograms, because
they can be understood independent of
the knowledge of any special language.

One of the most important things a global symbol provides is its identity.
This means: two parties can find out that they were
using the same symbol by comparing them and finding out that they are equal.

A computer can easily find out the identity when the data are really equal.
Therefore the pictograms should be exactly identical pixel by pixel.

Now let us assume we describe the symbol fish by a pictogram. It is very
easy, I think we will find a good one.
But the next task is much harder: Now we want to find a symbol for each sort
of fish in the world: I don't know how many there are,
but I think more than 10 000 maybe more than 100 000. ---> We will need a
good resolution for our pictograms.

But when we use a good resolution then its very hard to write down a symbol,
you have to define pixel by pixel in an image editor.
It is also hard to tell, if a pictogram is the original pictogram or if
there are just a few pixel different.
When you receive a pictogram of one sort of fish out of 100 000. How will
you find out its translated name for your language?
This job can be done only by a computer. It would take a long time to find
the symbol in a dictionary.
Words instead can be sorted alphabetically. In this case a dictionary is
useful.

There exist many abstract words without common visual association.


But the whole topic does not solve any knowledge-representation or
language-translation problems, its just a matter of 1 : 1 mapping
of global symbols.

--> Much more interesting is the question whether we can find such symbols
so that we are able to store unambigous knowledge and
if we can translate this stored knowledge to any natural (or at first more
or less natural like) language.

Is there a common scheme for the problem, that for some symbols no direct
translation is possible, because certain symbols are not
available in a natural language?

My theory for this is: at the end it turns out, that each language can
describe the same knowledge, the same facts. But there is a different
way to look at the same thing:

For example:
Let us assume languageA knows only a symbol for the circumference of a
circle, not the radius.
LanguageB knows only a symbol for the radius of a circle, not for the
circumference.

Now both languages can define a circle. They can also define the same
circle.
But a translator cannot translate the size of the circle unless he knows the
relation:
circumference = 2*r*PI

This relation can neither be expressed in languageA nor in languageB.
So there are two ways out of this dilemma:
A) We introduce the word 'circumference' in languageB and 'radius' in
languageA and we tell the relation: circumference = 2*r*PI in languageA and
languageB.
B) We map PI and circumference to an intermediate global representation. The
relation circumference = 2*r*PI is defined only in the
intermediate layer. But we are able to translate the size of the circle
without introducing new symbols for languageA and languageB.

Does a scheme like that cover most symbol mapping problems. Do you know
further problems?


Stefan