SaintSal: It's a good start but apart of semantics (icons with meaning) you also need a grammar to call it a language. In case of visual language it means that there is a way of merging simple glyphs into more complicated icon. Here is an article that describe how it can be done in medicine:
I'm looking for an open source project that I could use in my applications. There is http://thenounproject.com/ but it does not have grammar. The merging of icons is done for you (e.g., the iron icon with one, two, or three dots)
Thanks, that's really helpful. I hadn't thought of grammar explicitly, mainly because I was more focused on something like design patterns.
So far, the emergent grammar has been: equity and/or balance sheet, then an event or a profit/loss, then back to equity and/or balance sheet.
I'd like to see what people try to do with this before insisting on a grammer, so you're right, maybe calling it a visual language is overstating where things are at the moment.
On a technical note, you could define three macros
\equity{10}{90}
% where the units are percentages, and
\balance{8}{10}
\RandC{8}{10}
% where the units are in mm
and use this level of abstraction in your source code.
I suggest, the diagrams in a separate column to support the narration,
but with tikz you could even put them inline.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 16.0 ms ] threadhttp://www.sd.polyu.edu.hk/iasdr/proceeding/papers/Collabora...
I'm looking for an open source project that I could use in my applications. There is http://thenounproject.com/ but it does not have grammar. The merging of icons is done for you (e.g., the iron icon with one, two, or three dots)
So far, the emergent grammar has been: equity and/or balance sheet, then an event or a profit/loss, then back to equity and/or balance sheet.
I'd like to see what people try to do with this before insisting on a grammer, so you're right, maybe calling it a visual language is overstating where things are at the moment.
On a technical note, you could define three macros
and use this level of abstraction in your source code. I suggest, the diagrams in a separate column to support the narration, but with tikz you could even put them inline.These examples should get you started if you want to "program" your graphics: http://piratepad.net/GVsgD6x5D3
Speaking of power tools for graphics, check out also http://www.math.ubc.ca/~cass/piscript/ and the there-associated book http://www.math.ubc.ca/~cass/graphics/manual/