[PD-dev] Re: Restructuring of CVS/externals

Hans-Christoph Steiner hans at eds.org
Sun Feb 5 20:34:51 CET 2006


On Feb 5, 2006, at 6:26 AM, Frank Barknecht wrote:

> Hallo,
> Mathieu Bouchard hat gesagt: // Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
>
>> Why did algebra switched to a very terse notation during the 16th  
>> century,
>> and that, for most purposes, scientists and engineers haven't looked  
>> back
>> much ?
>>
>> I mean, why did geometers start to write "a²+b²=h²" instead of writing
>> "the square of the length of the adjacent side plus the square of the
>> length of the opposed side equals the square of the length of the long
>> side" like they used to do ?
>
> I must admit, reading "trigger bang anything bang"  in a patch to my
> eyes much looks like "the square of the length of ..." and I really
> have problems following such patches as quickly as I can follow the
> more common usual [t b a b].

I think that's more a matter of what you are used to.  Personally, I  
avoid abbreviations whenever possible, and I find it much more  
readible. Oftentimes, I need to stretch out big [trigger]s, so the long  
names help with that.

I like a "bang" to always read "bang", or a "float" to always read  
"float", like here:

[route float]
[route bang]
[bang]
[bang(

None of these work as [trigger b] or [trigger f] does:
[route f]
[route b]
[b]
[b(
[f 1(

So it seems to be that the [trigger] abbrevations are a bit of a kludge.

.hc

________________________________________________________________________ 
____

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during  
that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big  
Business, for Wall Street and the bankers.
                                             - General Smedley Butler





More information about the Pd-dev mailing list