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history/yaw/20131018-224916.txt
editor : alpha [82.254.222.189] 2013/10/18 22:49:16 {div {@ style="display:none;"} {define r (char) °°return '{span {@ style="color:red;"}'+char+'}'; °°} } _h1 {r Y}et {r A}nother {r W}iki ! _p Why alphawiki (in ze lambdaway) ? _p In my humble opinion, CMS (Content Management systems, blogs, wikis,...) are not only often unnecessarily complex, but they generally come with obfuscated, limited and rather incoherent syntaxes. The alphawiki project comes from this observation : the fundamental tree (or forest) structure of a text, of an HTML page or of Lisp code, opens a wide door to light, smart and effective WEB tools, that remain easy to use by people ... provided these people have a minimum level of knowledge. For instance : _ul 1) {b everyone has been (de)formed} to understand that the value of such an expression {b « 1+2*3+4 »} is {b « 1+(2*3)+4 = {u 11} »} and not {b « (1+2)*3+4 = {u 13} »} or {b « 1+2*(3+4) = {u 15} »}. Actually, a lot of people are forever disgusted from maths because it is not evident to know and understand the priority rules to be applied to this kind of expressions. Even in the world of coding, building a syntactic analyzer handling such expressions is far from easy. _ul 2) {b nobody has been formed} to play with such an expression « (+ 1 (* 2 3) 4) » whose value is 11. It's a pity, because the syntactic analyze of such an "s-expression" (a flat representation of a tree) is easy to build. We do that in real-time with sentences which have a tree structure ! Should you have a look in the alphawiki [[parser]], you will be convinced by the simplicity of the engine handling the mathematic and textual s-expressions. In fact, it has (almost) nothing to do. A tree is transformed into another tree. It's nothing but a "skin" change. _ul 3) there remains one main condition : {b the user must be formed} to play with s-expressions like « (+ 1 (* 2 3) 4) » and not with "horrors" like « 1+2*3+4 ». _p And this does clearly exceed the field of mathematics, every languages are concerned ! People are natively accustomed to treat in realtime tree-structured sentences. For instance (see [[source|http://www.lattice.cnrs.fr/sites/itellier/poly_info_ling/]]) : {pre The structure of such a simple sentence : « the bird poses its legs on a branch » can be written like this : (S (GN the bird) (GV poses (GN its legs)) (GP on (GN a branch))) which is a "flat" representation of this tree structure : S / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / GV / / \ / / \ / / \ GN / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ the bird GV GP / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ poses GN on GN / \ / \ its legs a branch } _p Almost every people is able to do with such a structure to get its meaning. {u The question is} : why aren't we natively accustomed to treat in realtime much more simple tree-structures like this math expression giving the hypothenuse of a right triangle : {pre (square_root (+ (* 3 3) (* 4 4))) which is a flat representation of this simple tree structure : square_root | + / \ / \ * * / \ / \ 3 3 4 4 } _p The language of mathematics has been corrupted by a complex stacking of horrible notations (prefix, infix, postfix, root_symbol, integral, differential, vectors, matrices, tensors, and so on ... ) created all along the history by (too) clever people (Descartes, Leibnitz, Gauss, Riemann, Lie, ..., Bourbaki). Obviously, these notations are incompatible with a unique structure, as sentences have in natural language. It could be the reason that so numerous people can't understand and hate maths (and coding), while at the same time they are so clever to share complex informations in their native languages. _p People are "{b tree natives}", so let them use {b tree notations} ! So do computers ... _p But this is {r Y}et {r A}nother {r S}tory ! {center {show {@ src="../data/sciences_blackboard.jpg" height="350" width="700" title="The STEM Crisis Is a Myth. The STEM are a Babel Tower (Photo: Justin Lewis/Getty Images)"}}} _h4 more in _ul [[syntax]] _ul [[parser]] _ul [[substitution]] _ul [[dom]] _ul [[xtending]] _ul ... _h4 links _ul [[learn-to-code-code-to-learn|https://www.edsurge.com/n/2013-05-08-learn-to-code-code-to-learn]] _ul ...