[MR] A (Probably Ridiculous) Heraldic Suggestion

[C. Brian Towey]

a) As for scanning the whole library of registered emblazons, all it takes
is a sheet feeder and some determination.  With a little ingenuity, one
could use optical character recognition to read, say, a membership-number
sticker in one corner of the form, which would let the computer
cross-reference the picture to the person without a lot of keypunching.  I,
for one, make my living doing this sort of thing, and I bet there are
others.

b) Every few years, our computer-savvy members get the idea to turn blazon
into a page description language, like PostScript.  There's no reason why
that could not be done.  As far as I know, nobody has ever produced a final
product.  It would be fun to try.

c) The Blazons 95 program was superseded by Blazons 2000, which was a pretty
nice tool.  It was available at blazons.com.  However, that Web site appears
to be gone, and I can't find a source for the program any more.  Sic transit
gloria software.

d) Lord Kyl's menu-driven interface design has great potential, because the
pick lists can have all sorts of logic behind them.  I can well imagine such
a program not only enforcing tinctures (which it does very strictly), but
even looking up in the O&A to remove obvious conflicts from the choice list.
(Final checking, of course, would have to be done by skilled humans.)

Your servant,

Charles Fleming