The Theory of Visual Sentences to Formalize Interactive Visual Messages

This chapter introduces an approach to the theory of visual languages based on the notion of visual sentence as defined by the integration of pictures and descriptions. The chapter proceeds firstly by tracking the history of the ideas that stemmed from the initial IEEE Workshop held at Hiroshima (Japan) during 1984 and then gradually progressing toward the formalisms that build up the theory of visual languages. The theory of visual sentences allows a coherent view of both static and dynamic aspects of human-computer interaction, as well as of the relations between the user and the machine during the interaction.