I’ve been thinking of my friend Harriet, who called herself the Famous Librarian, over the last couple days. I’ve been struggling for some sort of notation on an enumerated classification or the foci within a faceted scheme that would allow interpolation of new classes or foci. I just can’t accept introducing rigidity by adding notation, when the hierarchy of concepts themselves — the meat in this meal — would accept new additions without much trouble. Doesn’t seem right.
Then I was reminded of Harriet’s fascination with color-coding as a directly perceived, intuitive way to indicate categories. She was more fond of the pastel shades than I (or anyone else, ever) was, but the concept seemed doable to pick up the hex codes for the colors as notation. They don’t look like sequential notation to the human eye, but they are, and a computer can parse them, which would be the point of the notation overall — right?
So this is what I came up with for an assignment. I chose these manually, using websafe colors vertically on the Photoshop color picker for the most encompassing foci and stepping horizontally across the color range from those for similar but more specific foci. In that way new foci could be interpolated within the proper ranges just by picking a color in between and grabbing its hex code. The variation in shades would be small if the list of foci were to get too long, as seen in the beverage column. But it’s still interpolation.
A real implementation would have to be more systematic in defining hex codes than my manual selections, but hex codes are determined in a standardized way to make that possible. One downside, however: This already looks like someone spilled a box of crayons, and I’m fairly sure that aesthetic tragedy would occur as a computer just stepped a few values to the left and down a few. Also, this took a pretty ridiculous amount of time, and I’m not too sure of the value added over more simple decimal notation that leaves spans to be filled in over time.
|
Purpose |
Function |
Food |
Beverage |
Material |
|
333333: Eating |
FFFF66: Plates |
CC0000: Appetizer |
0000CC: Nonalcoholic |
00CC00: Ceramic |
|
666666: Drinking |
CCCC00: Bowls |
CD2020: Salad |
3232CC: Water |
009900: Metal |
|
cccccc: Serving |
999900: Glasses |
CD3A3A: Soup |
000099: Cocktails |
006600: Wood |
|
|
666600: Implements |
CD5959: Bread |
23239A: Martini |
003300: Glass |
|
|
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990000: Main Course |
49499B: Highball |
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|
|
991313: Asparagus |
000066: Wine |
|
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9A2424: Fish |
181867: Red wine |
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9A3737: Steak |
2E2E68: White wine |
|
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|
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9A4848: Gravy |
424268: Champagne |
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9A5858: Pasta |
000033: Digestifs |
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660000: Dessert |
0D0D31: Port |
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161632: Grappa |
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222233: Cordial |
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| Salad Plates | 333333: | FFFF66: | CD2020: | : | 00CC00 |
| Martini Glasses | 666666: | 999900: | : | 23239A: | 003300 |
| Forks | 333333: | 666600: | : | : | 009900 |
| Serving Platters | cccccc: | FFFF66: | 990000: | : | 00CC00 |