[MR] Invisible Madman (was OA for O&A)

[Towey, Brian]

"Invisible madman."  I like it!

My favorite is in Spanish:

Original - Come on in and have a seat.

Spanish translation - Entre no mas y toma una silla.

English retranslation - Between no more and drink a chair.

If the goal were to make a program that would translate any blazon into the
correct emblazon, I completely agree that it would be very difficult.

But, if the goal is simply to choose from among some basic heraldic elements
and blazon the choices, that wouldn't be nearly so hard.  And, you could add
enough choices to make it interesting without having a complicated blazon.

Just a few menu choices quickly multiply into a huge number of combinations.
(100 solid or bi-color fields) x (100 stripes and borders of various colors)
x [(10 animals) x (4 postures) x (2 directions) + 10 geometric charges + 20
tools and buildings] x (a few valid colors per charge, depending on the
background) = millions of basic but unambiguous blazons.  More if you allow
repeated charges (i.e. 3 lions).

And the people who want something really complicated can still draw it by
hand.

Would searching the O and A turn up all conflicts?  No, but it would warn
the user of any obvious ones.  Seems to me that when I first turned in my
form, the herald flipped through the Big Printout and did the same - checked
for obvious conflicts.  That didn't guarantee approval, and neither would
this program.  This would just help with the initial screening.

Besides, this is just a wish list, right?  Anybody who's been involved with
a big IT project knows: you don't let common sense limit your user
requirements. <G>  Dream big, my friends.  Some caffeine-crazed programmer
might just pull it off.

-Charles Fleming
mka Expensive Computer Consultant In Obscure Languages