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From:
Susanne Bentele Date: Sun Jan 13, 2002 12:22 pm Subject: Re: Questions for a Notation Comparisons Study | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Hi everybody! James Shepard-Kegl wrote: >Just to weigh in on this... >In my opinion, at some point, speed is irrelevant. >(...) >The journey is not a race. The goal is to get to the destination. I completely agree with everything you said. To clarify my intention: My point is not an evaluation of the different speeds it takes to write something in a different language of in a different writing system. What you told us are all the points that *are* important and speed is not really important. My point, however, was finding out about writing economy (don't know wheather this is the correct English term - in German it's "Schreibökonomie"). From what you tell me and what Val said to this question it becomes obvious that writing SW is just as "economic" as writing e.g. roman letters. Which might surprise some people, namely those people who say that all SW eventually boils down to is drawing pictures of the respective signs. The assumption behind this is that drawing would take longer than writing. Good to be able to prove them wrong. ;-) And therefore the question about speed is important to me. Another point for writing economy is the design of each symbol. From a typograph's point of view many of the symbols are (no offence!!) 'badly designed' in as they need to many strokes in to many directions. So this is another point where speed seems relevant for proving that 'good' type design (according to those rules) is not everything once the writing system is put into application and works very well because it is accepted by the people who use it. And they have gone to show us that they can write SW just as fast as a writing system that has 'evolved' over many centuries. Well, I hope my elaborations cast some light on the intention why I asked this question and nobody needs to feel offended (or confused about the goal of the question)... :-) (I would like to quote some of the statements that were made in the discussion - does a public emailing list mean I can quote right away or do I need special permission from everybody? If so, may I have your permission...?) Best wishes, Susanne | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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