Re: LOGO-L> Language vs Visual

["James E. Hoburg" <james.e.hoburg@lucent.com>]

Jeff writes:
> >   It seems to me that any fair test of either the efficiency or learning
> > difficulty of Morse code or ASCII would of neccessity have to involve an effort
> > commitment approaching that of learning, say, German, Chinese or any other new
> > and unfamiliar language.  Wouldn't effort-to-fluency be a reasonable gauge?
> > jeh
> Except that ASCII and Morse are not languages. They are synthetic codes 
> for abstracting existing character sets, which in turn represent language...

  Nor is the Roman alphabet a language, although (more or less) it is widely
used in the visual representation of Western European languages.  Isn't the
question really whether or not there are some aspects of the representation
(Morse, ASCII, Roman alphabet, etc.) which make human learning and use easy or
difficult?

  It doesn't seem that appealing to a representation's origin (designed
vs. evolved) or purpose (human communication vs. machine readability) really
says anything about it's actual ease or difficulty of use.  A representation may
be easy or difficult to learn or use, but neither its origin or avowed purpose
explains *why* (or whether) that is so.

Regards,
jeh
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