Characterizing visual languages
Darrell R. Raymond · 2002
A better understanding of the visual character of languages is important in developing one's ability to exploit the human visual system. The author briefly outlines Goodman's (1976) distinction between notational and analog languages, and describes its use in developing the notion of syntactic and semantic density as the defining characteristic of visual languages. Several languages are evaluated for their use of density. He concludes that practical languages are most visually effective when their layout is constrained by an important semantic domain.>