On seeing things

摘要

The importance of effective task representations in the design of programs intended to exhibit sophisticated behaviour manifests itself in the area of Picture Interpretation as the so-called ‘Linguistic Approach’. A brief survey of Pattern Description Languages leads up to an analysis of a simple letter recognition task from which it is argued that at least two types of description of the pattern must be utilised if any significant pattern generalisation is to be achieved, and in general that all picture interpretation tasks involve descriptions in two domains. Further support for this viewpoint is provided by a characterization of the problem of interpreting line diagrams as pictures of three dimensional sceness, in which the form of these decriptions and of their interrelation by an algorithm is described in detail. The paper concludes by relating these ideas to the distinction between syntax and semantics, and the concept of denotation.