Squiggles and scrawls

Rob Davidson

Message 6386 · 26 Jan 1997 03:23:59 · Fixed-width font · Whole thread

Oberdan Otto wrote (with a lot of snip'd bits)

>In spite of my personal
>preferences, our teachers committee then had and still has people for whom
>the symbolic representation communicates nothing, but all are able to make
>sense of the text representation.

Some of us can make sense of nothing on paper, symbols *or* text, until they
see the dance. Once I have seen what I have to do then a recap, or notes,
or Pillings are reasonable prompts - not to mention the frantic wavings of
the rest of the set before I cut their paths short in a reel :-)

>Fortunately, I think many people have come to the realization that their
>copyright can only be enforced against wholesale copying from their books.

At least one active SCD area in California uses Pillings-ese for all of the
local socials, which makes life much easier. A full programme fits neatly
into three columns (landscape) of one of their abominably non-standard
letter sheets.

>I doesn't appear that an enforceable copyright can extend to the notation
>system itself.

It's doubtful that the Pillings people could convince Courts on either side
of the Pacific that they have "intellectual property" to protect.

I would still like to see an improvement on the system before it becomes
some sort of standard - note what Pillings does for any "unusual" formation,
like diagonal rights & lefts.

Robert Davidson