5 ms·

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 sen

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 information. A simple example is electronics. A circuit diagram is not text. It is a graphical representation using a standard notation. It is much easier to understand than spending paragraphs describing which component should connect to which other component. Unless you decide that "text" should include such special representations. Then the question becomes: where do you draw the line between what you consider text and what is no longer text. In an isometric exploded view of some mechanical device text? Are architecture plans text? Because all those representations are better than the written word to convey their meaning...

mantap 6y ago
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.
- eat_veggies 6y ago
  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 https://www.unicode.org/pending/symbol-guidelines.html
- duckerude 6y ago
  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?
- eimrine 6y ago
  Unicode answer is not so great because you can express compiled program in Unicode which obvious is non-text. Math expressions are always text because they always fit TeX or LaTeX. Architecture is a beautiful example which provokes thinking. From first view it is a non-text, but an architect Antoni Gaudí has developed an attitude with hanging models which made his architecture plans to share some abilities of text even not being written. You may tell me I am crazy but his hanging models is a WYSIWYG model of something from real world so I consider it a text despite it could not be simply copied. IDK maybe a modern architect software shares that attitude, for make these models be copied easy. So my opinion is that architecture plan may be text at least from a structure point of view.
smoe 6y ago
Even if you include things like circuit diagrams as text I don't agree that you should always bet on text. Personally I think you should always pick text as a default, unless you have good reasons to chose something else and use text to elaborate on it. Couple of examples: - For a musician to convey a musical idea, the arguably most straight forward and effective way to do so is just to play/sing/record it. Any other means like musical notation, textual description, midi etc. require a lot of additional knowledge and work on both ends of the communication and come with their own drawbacks. - The Wikipedia text about human rights in the article is a great example when written text is better than an image. But say I want to describe what the grand canyon looks like. Personally, I don't have the writing skills to really do it justice. On the other hand my phone has a camera so I can snap a couple of pictures that will get the other person a much better idea of how it is. In this case text is useful for additional information not visible in the image, like why the color of the rocks is how they are. - If I'm living together with someone and want to discuss how to pain the walls, a pantone color swatch is going to be much more useful than textual description of the colors. Text is useful here after the decision to pass on the color code to the contractor. - I reckon for most people it easier to follow instructions on how to cut up a chicken when they are in form of a video or image slide show over just written words. I don't think the problem is whether text is better or not, but that often the choice of medium is not based on what makes most sense for the use case, but other considerations like what will yield better conversion numbers.
eimrine 6y ago
Let me try. Text is anything human-readable which supports easy editing in WYSIWYG way. For example: XML, maybe JSON, non-obfuscated source code, LaTeX notation for math, vector images, chess notation, etc. Diagrams are not text but they are easy to be describen in plain English, much easier than memes or photos. Electric circuit is a beautiful example between text and non-text. You know EC is drawing but any EC is made of hierarchy of two-port networks, so it is like system of equations written in unusual for mathematics way. You can add or erase any element or change any nominal and recalculate a new circuit instantly. If you have a friend working in an electronics, you can give him any valid EC and ask him what he gonna do with it. His answer will be reading, not just looking at.
- Banana699 6y ago
  Your definition appeals to tools and technological limitations, smalltalk had this notion that anything is editable, including the IDE itself and the (running!) programs. Your definition + a smalltalk IDE would imply that a running program is text. Furthermore, the abilities of the message reciever factor into this as well : web pages are editable, but somewhat non-trivially. So the combination of tooling and abilities could be used to argue that everything is text: for a graphics artist with even a paint instance running, a picture is the epitome of human readability and editabiliy, while chess sounds like a gibberish unicode file opened with a wrong encoding. That doesn't mean your definition is useless, its an interesting take to draw the lines between media along editabiliy, but I wouldn't call that a definition of text. It would exclude and include all the wrong things. One is really starting to believe Wittgenstein that all disagreements boil down to definitions.

mantap 6y ago

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.

eat_veggies 6y ago
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 https://www.unicode.org/pending/symbol-guidelines.html
duckerude 6y ago
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?
eimrine 6y ago
Unicode answer is not so great because you can express compiled program in Unicode which obvious is non-text. Math expressions are always text because they always fit TeX or LaTeX. Architecture is a beautiful example which provokes thinking. From first view it is a non-text, but an architect Antoni Gaudí has developed an attitude with hanging models which made his architecture plans to share some abilities of text even not being written. You may tell me I am crazy but his hanging models is a WYSIWYG model of something from real world so I consider it a text despite it could not be simply copied. IDK maybe a modern architect software shares that attitude, for make these models be copied easy. So my opinion is that architecture plan may be text at least from a structure point of view.

smoe 6y ago

Even if you include things like circuit diagrams as text I don't agree that you should always bet on text. Personally I think you should always pick text as a default, unless you have good reasons to chose something else and use text to elaborate on it. Couple of examples: - For a musician to convey a musical idea, the arguably most straight forward and effective way to do so is just to play/sing/record it. Any other means like musical notation, textual description, midi etc. require a lot of additional knowledge and work on both ends of the communication and come with their own drawbacks. - The Wikipedia text about human rights in the article is a great example when written text is better than an image. But say I want to describe what the grand canyon looks like. Personally, I don't have the writing skills to really do it justice. On the other hand my phone has a camera so I can snap a couple of pictures that will get the other person a much better idea of how it is. In this case text is useful for additional information not visible in the image, like why the color of the rocks is how they are. - If I'm living together with someone and want to discuss how to pain the walls, a pantone color swatch is going to be much more useful than textual description of the colors. Text is useful here after the decision to pass on the color code to the contractor. - I reckon for most people it easier to follow instructions on how to cut up a chicken when they are in form of a video or image slide show over just written words. I don't think the problem is whether text is better or not, but that often the choice of medium is not based on what makes most sense for the use case, but other considerations like what will yield better conversion numbers.

eimrine 6y ago

Let me try. Text is anything human-readable which supports easy editing in WYSIWYG way. For example: XML, maybe JSON, non-obfuscated source code, LaTeX notation for math, vector images, chess notation, etc. Diagrams are not text but they are easy to be describen in plain English, much easier than memes or photos. Electric circuit is a beautiful example between text and non-text. You know EC is drawing but any EC is made of hierarchy of two-port networks, so it is like system of equations written in unusual for mathematics way. You can add or erase any element or change any nominal and recalculate a new circuit instantly. If you have a friend working in an electronics, you can give him any valid EC and ask him what he gonna do with it. His answer will be reading, not just looking at.

Banana699 6y ago
Your definition appeals to tools and technological limitations, smalltalk had this notion that anything is editable, including the IDE itself and the (running!) programs. Your definition + a smalltalk IDE would imply that a running program is text. Furthermore, the abilities of the message reciever factor into this as well : web pages are editable, but somewhat non-trivially. So the combination of tooling and abilities could be used to argue that everything is text: for a graphics artist with even a paint instance running, a picture is the epitome of human readability and editabiliy, while chess sounds like a gibberish unicode file opened with a wrong encoding. That doesn't mean your definition is useless, its an interesting take to draw the lines between media along editabiliy, but I wouldn't call that a definition of text. It would exclude and include all the wrong things. One is really starting to believe Wittgenstein that all disagreements boil down to definitions.