On 25/09/2004 18:50, Doug Ewell wrote:
...
Philippe makes an excellent case for the continued use and teaching of
shorthand, but none of his arguments really demonstrates why shorthand
should be encoded in a standard character encoding such as Unicode.
There is no question that major corporations and small businesses alike
relied heavily on shorthand before the advent of machine-assisted
transcription, and many would benefit greatly from continuing to use it.
(Are stenographic machines or computerized equivalents really in common
use at ordinary companies for taking meeting minutes?) ...
There does not seem to be a demonstrated need to *interchange* shorthand
text from one computer system to another. That appears to be one factor
that determines whether encoding is justified or not.
If we are considering a scenario in which someone takes shorthand notes
at a meeting and transcribes them later, interchange between computers
is likely to be required. If this process is to be automated, a sensible
way to do so would be for the minute-taker to write shorthand on to a
hand-held computer's screen. This data would then need to be transferred
to a desktop or networked machine for transcription and further editing.
The most processing-efficient way to do so might be to transfer images,
but that would be a lot of data for a record of an entire meeting, so
for bandwidth efficiency the hand-held computer should analyse the
shorthand and transfer the shorthand text in some kind of encoded form.
--
Peter Kirk
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (personal)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work)
http://www.qaya.org/
