On Thu, 6 Dec 2007, Bill Page wrote:

| 
| On 12/6/07, Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:
| >
| > On Thu, 6 Dec 2007, Bill Page wrote:
| >
| > | If you wish can treat the sequence of symbols:
| > |
| > |   ( x ( x x ( x ( x ) ) x ) )
| > |
| > | as encoding a kind of "curve" is some abstract differential geometry.
| > | Then each '(' and ')' token has some associated unit "curvature" or
| > | something like that. But I do not see any advantage to this point of
| > | view.
| >
| > Are the '(' and ')' needed?
| 
| ??? Yes of course!

Sorry, why `of course!'  There is nothing obvious there.

| 
| > And in case they are needed, why should they be thought of as
| > curvature, as opposed to mere boundary markers?
| >
| 
| Perhaps they can be thought of as boundary markers.

Which they are from the Spad parser/definition point of view.


| I was talking
| about a geometric visual analogy for the structuring of program code,
| but you apparently want to take a more abstract topological view.

I'm just suspicious of analogy.

| Since topology logically precedes the the usual notion of geometry
| perhaps in this case the notion of dimension is not of much
| importance.  It is not clear what advantage this might have. Could you
| explain?

The advantage of pretending that the Spad language is 2-dimensional
when that has not been established by logical inference?  Intellectual
honesty.  

-- Gaby

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