I thought that Bliss was introduced as an alternative
language system for people with a spastic problem.
I think that I saw a program on a Britisch BBC-computer around 1985. 

One of my professors on the university was even longer ago involved
in the famous research of Osgood: 
the cultural differences in the meaning of words. 

I think that I even can remember one Dutch word that could not be translated

in American English: gezellig. 

Don't you expect to meet this time that kind of cultural context problems? 

-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Kay [mailto:Alan.Kay at squeakland.org]
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2002 4:52 AM
To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
Subject: Re: Toch weer antwoord: RE: Antwoord: Squeak
Internationalization (vo orheen: Re: AW: AW: -- Whats this 'AW:' mean?)


Richard --

To your (2) question: Yes, we looked into it quite deeply at PARC ca 
1975, and even had a visit from Mr Symbol Man via a friend of ours, 
Ted Kahn, who knew him. There are lots of interesting things about 
BlissSymbols but, as with most such systems, it was much much better 
with nouns than with any other part of speech. Through a variety of 
such investigations our interest in iconic symbols became centered in 
their memorability (cf Haber, etc.) rather than their ability to 
carry meaning to those who had never seen them before. This is still 
a point of confusion for many who dream of pictorial languages, or 
those who don't understand the point of icons at all.
      BTW, a particularly semi-invented-semi-evolved human language is 
Ameslan, which has many interesting and worthy features. We (Steve 
Weyer and I) also put some effort into seeing whether a workable 
universal language for meaning and programming could be fashioned 
from some of the best Ameslan ideas.

Cheers,

Alan

-------


At 2:53 PM +1300 2/4/02, Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:
>Concerning "translations"
>
>(1) The "Re:" -vs- "AW:" example is precisely one which should be
>     handled by MUA display code.  Just because "re" is NOT an English
>     word but a 'token' inherited from general European culture, it is
>     entirely appropriate for mail user agents to put "Re:" in computer
>     files but display "Concerning:" (which is how _I_ pronounce it)
>     or whatever on the screen.  It's just like the way law cases are
>     "Regina vs Seagoon", pronounced "Queen against Seagoon" (yes, I've
>     heard that Americans say "versus" instead of "against", but that's
>     really my point).
>
>(2) Just for grins, has anyone considered a Bliss Symbols syntax for
>     Smalltalk?  "Mr Symbol Man" Bliss was, after all, trying to invent
>     a language-neutral writing system, and now that we have the
>     technology...


--