Text-Graphic Object Notation

Pattern structure is shown by the "spider webs" =   . They can be turned off and on and are not part of the image. Empty patterns show as just the terminating ground sign =     from the end of the horizontal bars. And notationally speaking, the ground sign terminator is not necessary, so may be omitted for clarity, as for example with the letters "GEORGE".

Sometimes pattern order may be important, and sometimes not, in which case patterns function as sets.

Stroke lines have varying width over a path.

Separation of Space and Tree

In a diagram, each text graphic object has a spatial location independent from its pattern membership, but usually related in conventional ways. These conventions are part of the visual language that humans use in interpreting diagrams of that kind.

Romanji text, binary trees, and bar charts are all examples of conventions which relate spatial arrangement to underlying tree structure. A spatial parser has been written which can handle the latter two (among others). The parser takes two inputs: a machine readable visual grammar for the target visual language, and a region on the screen in which atomic elements from an expression in the target language are spatially arranged according to the conventions of that language. Using the former it then parses the latter, returning a complex pattern in which copies of the visual atoms from the region are arranged in the structure denoted by the grammar.

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