Dear All,
Here my and Oeyvind's proposal:
"
An important class of E90 Symbolic Objects consists of arrangements of
instances of a finite set of symbols, such as the character types of an
alphabet, following rules of arrangement that make the relative order of
the symbols unambiguous, such as writing symbols regularly spaced, in
regularly spaced lines, aggregated into paragraphs etc. Most texts, but
also diagrams such as metro maps fall under this category, because they
represent stations and their connections in a way only loosely related
to their actual geometry. The rules for the arrangements of symbols
quantify relative positions so that they can unambiguously be
interpreted as logical structures or grammars. For instance, inter-word
spaces are sufficiently larger than inter-character spaces not to
confuse them. We denote these objects as “formal symbol structures”.
Common to them is the property that there is a minimal resolution under
which they are still “readable”, i.e. under which the used kinds of
symbols can be distinguished and the logical role of their relative
positions unambiguously be interpreted. This even holds for melodies
expressed in some musical key. If the digitization of a physical carrier
of such a formal symbol structure is carried out in the necessary
resolution and coverage, the complete symbolic content of the physical
carrier will also be readable in a representation of the reproducing
digital object, as well known from operating paper scanners. Then, the
digital object will incorporate (/P165 incorporates/) the symbolic
object on the physical carrier.
Ambiguity about this property may, for instance, arise if some
characters are badly readable on the original. For practical reasons, we
recommend not to regard such minor shortcomings of the original as a
reason to question the /P165 incorporates/ relation of the digital
representation, as long as the overall sense (or score) is recognizable,
in particular, if the intended meaning can be guessed equally well from
the original as from the digital representation. The same holds for
minor flaws in the digital representation itself.
In contrast, for symbolic objects in a non-discrete form, such as
paintings, there is no clear minimal resolution and the actual color
reflection behavior cannot be reproduced digitally with current means.
As long as this is the case, the digitized image cannot be said to
incorporate the original, it only “/P138 represents/” it. (For audio
recordings, there is no equivalent to/P138 represents/, and the more
general /P67 refers to/ should be employed). Actually, the symbolic
object a physical object carries is not uniquely defined by the physical
carrier but depends on the type of the symbolic object defined in a
model, which in turn serves a purpose of representation. If, for
instance, the original is a manuscript, a digitized image may
incorporate its text, which is instantiated and defined as a symbolic
object of type “character sequence” in an information system. However
other research-relevant optical features, which belong to richer
symbolic properties of the manuscript surface, such as colors, may not
be resolved by the image. This richer definition of a symbolic object
carried by the physical object would not be incorporated in the
digitized image. In other words, the type of the symbolic object that is
described to be carried by the physical object determines the features
under consideration and hence allows for deciding if the digitized image
has sufficient qualities to incorporate it. There is however still no
good typology of symbolic objects with respect to the relevant
representational feature types.
Best,
martin
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Dr. Martin Doerr | Vox:+30(2810)391625 |
Research Director | Fax:+30(2810)391638 |
| Email: [email protected] |
|
Center for Cultural Informatics |
Information Systems Laboratory |
Institute of Computer Science |
Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH) |
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N.Plastira 100, Vassilika Vouton, |
GR70013 Heraklion,Crete,Greece |
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Web-site: http://www.ics.forth.gr/isl |
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