[MR] A (Probably Ridiculous) Heraldic Suggestion

[C. Brian Towey]

> Unfortunately, it's not that simple.

Things rarely are, alas!

> The single largest hurdle is Copyright.  The SCA, Inc and its
> subsidiary branches paid a lawyer to investigate the matter and the
> current legal opinion is that the SCA does not have the rights to
> create and distribute the images of people's Heraldic forms.

I could comment, but the Immortal Bard, as usual, has already put it more
eloquently than I.

> The second issue is that what we register is the picture, not the
> Blazon/words. 

Agreed! 

We already have a member database, and also the O&A.  Scanning is hard
enough. Heaven forbid that we should re-key all that information to identify
each scanned image!  Better to attach the scan to the existing record.  That
way, there is NO change to a person's heraldry, just a link from the
database to the actual picture.

Having been through the OCR wars, I didn't even suggest reading the
hen-scratch on the form.  Instead, I thought perhaps we could stick a big,
uniform number on one corner that would be the key to our existing records.

Of course, if the scanning effort is already well along then it's too late
to set up OCR fields.

> Instead, we get "hobby" software, which can be quite wonderful and
> well coded, but you run into matters like "I'm not interested in it
> anymore".  It happens.

Indeed.  Still, our heralds face a huge task, both in helping folks design
well, and in sorting through our vast archives.  Even hobby software may be
a help in need.

Many thanks,

Charles Fleming
"Wow!  Leisure sure is hard work!"