peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) (06/24/88)
In article <32674@aero.ARPA>, foy@aero.ARPA (Richard Foy) writes: > I agree with your assessment of the relative merits of pictures vs text. > However I wonder why this is true. > Techncal briefings come to mind. Sometimes one good chart showing a sketch > conveys a lot more more information a lot better than do a lot of text charts > or verbal statements. But you don't store the data in chart form. You store it in the form of the data that produced the chart, and then you plot it when you need to show it to someone. When it comes to the human interface, all data is graphical. Even text. It's just that you delay the conversion from ASCII to text until the last minute. Just imagine how hard it would be to edit text with a bitmap editor. Imagine how hard it would be to compile a screen image. No, while the data is in the computer, you want to maintain it at the highest level of abstraction you can. So the guy at point A doesn't get exactly the same graph as the guy at point B. So what? After all, I'm sure that the font you're all using isn't the same as mine. I have hacked Topaz up considerably, and I'm sure many of you have too. So, it's OK to post sculpt-3d data files, or postscript diagrams. Just leave the binaries at home. -- -- `-_-' Peter (have you hugged your wolf today?) da Silva. -- U Mail to ...!uunet!sugar!peter, flames to /dev/null. -- "A foolish consistancy is the hobgoblin of little minds".