Todd Walton wrote: > I have held a mistaken belief about what "orthogonal" means. I > thought it meant something like being on the same plane, but being not > related. Like size-of-biceps and computer savviness. But according > to m-w.com and Google's define feature, orthogonal implies a definite > relationship. > > m-w.com: > > 1 a : intersecting or lying at right angles b : having perpendicular > slopes or tangents at the point of intersection <orthogonal curves> > > 2 : having a sum of products or an integral that is zero or sometimes > one under specified conditions: as a of real-valued functions : having > the integral of the product of each pair of functions over a specific > interval equal to zero b of vectors : having the scalar product equal > to zero c of a square matrix : having the sum of products of > corresponding elements in any two rows or any two columns equal to one > if the rows or columns are the same and equal to zero otherwise : > having a transpose with which the product equals the identity matrix > > The closest it comes to my previous understanding is: > > 5 : statistically independent > > This number five is probably key to the way I hear computer people > using the word, but it's still not quite in line. > > Here are a few quotes from the list that demonstrate its use, with > signature lines for attribution. > > "However, some people actually want multiple character sets to render > and maybe even do so in a proportional way while conforming to the > user setting rather than having a completely orthogonal set of emacs > settings that everybody will complain about having to set." > -a > > "SCons somewhat compliments [the Eggs/setuptools project] but is more > or less orthogonal." > -Jon > > "The generation of publications might be considered a different > dimension of the overall system -- more-or-less orthogonal, I suppose > you might say." > ..jim > > "[C++'s Standard Template Library] is orthogonal to OOP. Bad OO is > not limited to C++. It has only been in the past 5 years that people > have figured out that deep inheritance *in any language* is bad." > -a
Well,I think you've hit the right answer with #5. If you find it's not always used precisely per /book/ meaning, I think you have to chalk that off to simplification/exaggeration or other license (perhaps tongue in cheek), or just a mistaken claim. Most casual uses here might mean something like "A has nothing to do with B', possibly augmented with "don't cloud the issue". Regards, ..jim -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
