Spatial Parsing for Visual Languages

Theoretical context. The long-term goal of this research is computer understanding of how humans use graphics to communicate. The full richness of graphic communication is exemplified in blackboard activity,* which is one kind of conversational graphics. Conversational graphics can be defined as the spontaneous generation and manipulation of text and graphics for the purpose of communication. But there is a problem with taking informal conversational graphics as a phenomenon for investigation using computer tools. The unrestricted use of text and graphics found on blackboards is too rich and ambiguous to be tackled head-on as a project in machine understanding.