[MR] A (Probably Ridiculous) Heraldic Suggestion

[Craig Levin]

Charles:

> 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.

Not really. While, today, we've got everything on standard-sized
sheets of paper (A4 for overseas, 8.5x11 for the US), things
weren't so nice in the "old days"-we've got sketches on old
napkins, in some files.

(snip)

> 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.)

I wish blazonry was so logical a jargon. Unfortunately, I can
come up with 2 perfectly reasonable emblazons for: Gules, a cross
potent & a chief argent*. Strictly speaking, they wouldn't
conflict...:)

Pedro

*Here's the deal: The phrase "a cross potent & a chief argent"
can be interpreted in 2 ways:

1) a cross that's the tincture potent (a nifty form of vair that
looks like little upper-case T's) and a chief argent.

2) a cross potent (which looks like 4 upper-case T's joined at
their bases) and a chief argent.

P