is an animated gif an image?
why is an animated gif an image?
is an animated GIF, where each frame is a page of text, an image?
ok, well, is a JPEG of a page of text an image?
ok well, if you print out a JPEG of a page of text, surely that is still an image then?
@Lady indeed, a jpeg of a page of text is an image, but a printout of that jpeg is text. My reasoning: On a computer, plaintext can be copy-pasted and have assistive tools used on it, therefore an image of text is not the same as text. But you can't do that with text on paper, so both a printout of plaintext and a printout of a jpeg of a page of text is text.
@unspeakablehorror wouldn’t the fact that you can’t copy-paste text on paper imply that it isn’t text, not that it is, if that is part of your definition of “text”?
@Lady No, because my definition of text depends on the context. On a computer, that is part of my definition of text, but in a non-computer environment it is not.
@unspeakablehorror but is not(computer‐text) not still not(computer)‐text? or do you think there is something fundamentally different between printing to an e‐ink screen and printing to paper?
@Lady Yes and no. They both have a partial overlap of definition in terms of being symbols with the ability to record and impart meaning to people, but the functional capabilities are part of the definition of text to me, and those change depending on whether text is on the computer or not. I'm viewing this in the context of a more formalized version of coercion (https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Linguistics/Analyzing_Meaning_-_An_Introduction_to_Semantics_and_Pragmatics_(Kroeger)/05%3A_Word_Senses/5.04%3A_Context-dependent_extensions_of_meaning) in that I think of the formal definition as literally changing depending on the context.
@unspeakablehorror sure, but it seems like a lot of privileging of “computer” to me. what makes computers so special?
@Lady I don't see this as privileging computers at all. In fact, I would see it as privileging a context if the definition was instead static and only addressed one context or the other. I think this should apply in non-computer contexts as well. For example, on Earth, the definition of up is defined with respect to Earth's gravity, but in space I define it differently as Earth's gravity is not as relevant in that context.
@unspeakablehorror but “on computer” vs “off computer” is a significant part of your definition of context. how is that not privileging “computer” as a category?
@unspeakablehorror there are websites which swap out letters for other letters and use special fonts as a form of DRM to prevent people from copy‐pasting from them. there are websites which don’t let people select text at all. there are PDFs whose underlying text that you can select and copy is OCR’d and buggy. there are PDFs with no underlying text at all.
i don’t have any problem classifying all of these things as text documents, because my definition of “text” doesn’t require any particular technological affordance or computer interface. it doesn’t require that a thing be on a computer, or off a computer. but you are defining “text”, in a computer context, based on what computers are able to do with a thing. this is a definite privileging of computers, and technological affordances, as the basis of your ontology. and it is the reason why you need to then come up with other definitions for other contexts where those technological affordances do not apply.
@Lady Sure, there are websites like that and pdfs like that.I don't consider those kinds of websites and pdfs to contain text.They are 'documents', but not text.
I think words should have different definitions depending on the context.Sometimes dictionary writers even think this, as they give multiple definitions to some words.
I understand that your definition of text differs from mine, but I would argue that you are simply privileging different things from me in constructing that definition