Dan: a welcome bit of fresh air.
On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 11:42 AM, Dan Bron <[email protected]> wrote: > No fixed set of symbols can express the infinite space of ideas. To express > an idea not represented by a known symbol, you must eventually use a compound > symbol. > > On paper (or electronic paper), space (or lack of space) is the typical way > humans communicate the idea of "compound" vs "distinct". Note the letters in > this email - the ones grouped together form words, and whitespace allows us > to separate words. > > Chinese may have tens of thousands of characters, but there are more ideas in > the world than that. At some point, even in Chinese (or APL), one will have > to group symbols together to express an idea. Changing the spacing will > change the grouping, whether in the eyes of a human or a computer program > (hence newline-delimited sentences even in APL). > > I think using non-ASCII symbols in J is a terrible idea. They're hard to > type, they're hard to communicate (transfer over e.g. email), they're > unreliable in rendering, and they are (ab initio) no more suggestive than > ASCII. All "suggestivity" of epsilon or iota or whatever is bred from > familiarity, and one can become just as familiar with ASCII-based symbols to > render them suggestive. For example, now when I see # I can't help but think > of a little sieve, filtering ore from dross. > > Moving away from a exotic symbolset to the vanilla, ubiquitous, and reliable > ASCII standard was a major motivating force in the creation of J. That force > has not diminished. When Unicode (including all the weirdo characters we're > proposing to use here) is just as vanilla, ubiquitous, reliable, and standard > as ASCII, then it will be just as good an idea to use Unicode as ASCII. > > But we're not there yet. > > Having said that, I would be fine with changing J's underpinnings to be > strict UTF8, so that it would permit Unicode identifiers, comments, literals, > etc. This would move J closer to the emerging standards of the internet, but > more importantly, would give each individual user the _choice_ of how he'd > like to write his J scripts. If someone wanted to use iota and epsilon, then > fine: > > {iota} =: i. > {epsilon} =: e. > > Done. And it's still compatible with all existing J processors (including > the ones residing in the J community's mental machinery). Plus we wouldn't > get into an endless, fruitless, enervating debate about which exotic > symbolset to use. We could each use what we prefer, but fundamentally, we'd > be using the only correct symbolset: ASCII. > > -Dan > > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Roger Hui > Sent: Friday, April 12, 2013 11:10 AM > To: Chat Forum > Subject: Re: [Jchat] [Jprogramming] J Symbols > > What I said was: > >> FYI, the differently spaced versions of the Chinese sentence do not >> quite > have the same meaning. Certainly not the same effect. > > Put in enough whitespace, esp. different amounts of whitespace, and one > effect is that it makes it look like you were drunk when you wrote the text. > Put in enough whitespace, and it has the meaning and effect of punctuation > (such as comma or parens). I know of at least one example learned in grade > school where punctuation changed the meaning of a sentence to its exact > opposite. > > I haven't thought much about it, but I believe the same thing works in > English, where you put the whitespace between words rather than letters. > > > > On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 5:05 AM, Raul Miller <[email protected]> wrote: > >> I do not know chinese, but I'll take Roger's word that the whitespace >> still has some significance there. >> >> [Replying in chat, also] >> >> Thanks, >> >> -- >> Raul >> >> On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 10:17 PM, Skip Cave <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> > Raul, >> > >> > Who said that ASCII English was ideal? >> > >> > Here's the sentence "I do not see why this should be an ideal" in >> Mandarin. >> > >> > 我不明白為什麼這應該是一個理想的 >> > >> > And here's the same sentence again in Mandarin, with different >> > spacing, >> but >> > with the same meaning. . >> > >> > 我不明 白為 什 麼這 應該 是 一 個理想的 >> > >> > And here's the same sentence again in Mandarin, with even different >> > spacing, yet with the same meaning. >> > >> > 我 不明白 為什 麼這 應該 是 一個 理 想 的 >> > >> > So true single-glyph symbolic languages are space-independent, and >> that's a >> > GOOD thing for writing. Your example shows why languages that use >> > multi-glyph words or symbols like English and J and thus are NOT >> > space independent, are a BAD thing for handwriting. >> > >> > When you write your sentence on the board in English, you have to be >> > careful to clearly indicate where the spaces are, or you get what >> > you showed in your first example. With a single-glyph languager like >> > Chinese, the spaces don't matter much. >> > >> > Skip >> > >> > On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 7:12 AM, Raul Miller <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> > >> >> On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 6:02 AM, Skip Cave >> >> <[email protected]> >> >> wrote: >> >> > Ideally a written version of the language should be space-independent. >> >> >> >> Id ono ts eew hyt hi ssh oul db ea nid e al. >> >> >> >> I do not see why this should be an ideal. >> >> >> >> -- >> >> Raul >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------- >> >> --- For information about J forums see >> >> http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm >> >> >> > >> > >> > >> > -- >> > Skip Cave >> > Cave Consulting LLC >> > Phone: 214-460-4861 >> > -------------------------------------------------------------------- >> > -- For information about J forums see >> > http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
