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Textual Material (umbel:SubjectConcept)
document, blurb, blurbs, documentation, documents, text, texts, textual material, writeup, writeups, written material
Definition
A specialization of InformationBearingThing (IBT). Each instance of TextualMaterial is an IBT a significant part of whose informational content is both (i) encoded in some CommunicationConvention (q.v.), usually a Language, and (ii) represented or displayed in a spatial format. Examples include a copy of a newspaper printed in English using the Roman alphabet, a copy of a book printed in English using Braille, and a poster written in Chinese characters. Condition (i) excludes things like hardcopies of drawings, while condition (ii) excludes things like magnetic tapes containing recorded speech. A piece of textual material always involves one or more spatially-localized representations -- usually physical inscriptions (see CharacterStringToken_Inscribed) -- of CharacterStrings (q.v.). Textual materials are usually tangible objects (such as the examples given above), but are sometimes intangibles like patterns of light projecting words onto walls or screens. Specializations of TextualMaterial include OfficialDocument and NonPublishedText. Note that, while there is considerable overlap between TextualMaterial and HardcopyInformationBearingObject, these collections differ in that the latter both includes IBTs that involve no character-string representations and excludes intangibles of any sort.
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