specs

[Laurent Martelli]

>>>>> "Brian" == RE01 Rice Brian T EM2 <BRice@vinson.navy.mil> writes:


    >> I advocate the complete separation of semantics and
    >> representation of information. One piece of information can be
    >> visualize in many different ways, depending of the preferences
    >> of the user.

    Brian> how is this different than what i advocate?

Well, I don't know, because I still don't understand what you advocate
through your arrow system. 

    Brian>  what "is" semantics anyway, other than the syntax of
    Brian> concepts?  what is representation other than the syntax of
    Brian> communication?

For me, semantics refers to the meaning of the concept. But I may
misuse the word. And concepts have no syntax associated to them. They
just exist. But you can represent them using different syntaxes and
languages. 

    Brian> another thing is that some of the abstraction operators for
    Brian> which i'm developing explanations do a lot of
    Brian> 'cross-cutting' that would result in an overload of
    Brian> identifiers.

    >> Overloading of identifiers looks like a syntactical problem to
    >> me. And I think I have already expressed my opinion on
    >> syntactical problems. :-)

    Brian> NO.  you're completely missing the point.  i don't mean
    Brian> overloading operators as is done in current languages.  i
    Brian> refer to gargantuan symbol tables required by a Lisp
    Brian> evaluator to emulate this system.  

I think that one shouldn't judge a system by the efficiency of its
known implementations. If we have a way to efficiently handle
gargantuan symbol tables, where's the problem ?

    >> Infinitary structures means infinite quantity of
    >> information. And this is a problem anyway if you consider that
    >> we only have finite amunt of memory.

    Brian> did i say STORE infinitary structures?  no.  i referred to
    Brian> reasoning about infinitary structures and postulating
    Brian> statements about their elements.

My mistake.

    >> And if you mean that prolific arrow structure might lead to
    >> performance problems, let me tell you something : I think the
    >> same about performance problems than about syntactical problems
    >> :-) (it comes after semantic related problems).

    Brian> you divide your world into 'syntax' and 'semantics', and i
    Brian> will watch you chase your tail as you watch your goal
    Brian> recede from view.

Have fun :-)

Laurent