There is a pharmacy.
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&t=p&lay ... 65668&z=15
Some readers might like to zoom-in onto the two symbols below the capital H of PHARMACIE: one appears to be carved in stone and the other appears to be either added onto the window or part of the structure of the window.
I am wondering whether the two symbols are glyph variants of the same meaning; or is the symbol in stone a general symbol for a pharmacy and the symbol on the window a trademark for the particular pharmacist; or maybe some other combination of meanings?
Here is a view of the Office de Tourisme, the Office of Tourism.
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&t=p&lay ... 65668&z=15
Here is a question that I am researching, in relation to localizable sentences, with language-independent symbols.
Suppose that a visitor asks, using a language-independent symbol, "Where is a pharmacy please?".
A local resident, or perhaps an automated server, receives the message and, knowing the direction that the person asking the question is facing, wishes to respond by expressing the directions to proceed forward to the crossroads junction, then turn left and then proceed forward, beyond a junction to the left and beyond a junction to the right and the desired location is on the left a short distance further on.
What sequence of short, self-contained, localizable sentences would be suitable?
Please note that the directions do not include the word pharmacy, so that the directions are generalized so that they could be used for other desired locations.
Please note that the directions would be part of a consistently designed set of localizable sentences that could be used to provide language-independent directions to a variety of desired locations from various places.
My idea is that a set of symbols could be encoded in the manner of emoji and used directly, yet the symbols would also be suitable for use in automated localization systems using a database for a particular language. Can that idea be realized as a practical system?
Readers making the journey in Google streetview might notice along the route the entrance to the shopping mall featured in earlier posts in this thread.
So, two fonts to try to identify and a research problem.
Some readers may already know of the
http://www.itcfonts.com/ webspace with the Expert Search feature and its facility that enables one to try to identify a font by answering questions about a sample. I have not yet tried to identify the two samples displayed in the streetview images linked from this post, so readers who try are researching.
William Overington
6 November 2009