Since my last attempt made no impact, let me try putting it another way. Revolution is like a Meccano set, which gives us pieces to make whatever we want. Most of us want extra nuts & bolts, longer braces, different angles etc. to use in our own constructions. You are asking for a fully operational machine to be included in the basic set, and while there is no harm in asking, I find your assumption that the advanced programming you want should be a vital part of the environment to be naive and irritating.
However, I have stated my view point and I can see I am not going to change yours, so we must agree to differ. Regards, Sarah On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 9:58 AM, Randall Reetz<[email protected]> wrote: > I have no sudden need for syllabic extraction. It would be interesting, > following your logic to ask mid 18th century people if they had a need for a > personal computer or digital network. Most people can't see past the widgets > in front of them. Thank god for the weirdos like bill atkinson who work > towards what should be instead of what is. Do you really think there is > something with more potential impact on the future of computing then > effective meaning and natural language processing? Do you imagine that I am > interested because I want to put dots between syllables in some wacky > personal dictionary re-invention waste-of-time hobby project in my > wood-paneled den (after my train set and battle of nomandy miniatures are > completed)? Meaning processing has the potential to change everything. If > the blocks we all have in our creative little hands can self assemble into > living breathing meaning machines (understanding not just executing > instructions), the whole world changes in ways previous technology and > infrastructure (plumbing, electricity, radio, rail, gas engines, powered > flight, even programmable computation) were but small hills in comparison. > > I have written simple stochastic parsing schemes that give me salient topic > information about any text I throw at them. How much better my meaning > abstractions would be if I had access to more info than which strings sat > between space characters. > > Us old folk have a tendency to cast computing in binary absolutes, we look to > applications that give a single answer that can be cast easily as other > correct or the result of a bug. But meaning is much fuzzier than > arithmetics. We are intimate with this fuzziness... It is how our own > computers (brains) work. Even so, we often reject computation that flirt and > struggles with truth at levels of complexity that real systems of any > interest exhibit. > > There is a whole world of possibilities beyond the absolutist horizon of our > own rather limited computational history. > > What would be as revolutionary today as hypercard was twenty some years ago? > > randall > > -----Original Message----- > From: Sarah Reichelt <[email protected]> > Sent: Friday, August 21, 2009 4:16 PM > To: How to use Revolution <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: Syllabic division of words > > On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 5:49 AM, Randall Reetz<[email protected]> > wrote: >> This should be a standard function in any xtalk environment. > > > This sort of comment comes up every now then and always makes me > laugh, no matter what feature it is referring to. > > Rev has enormous flexibility, so we all use it in very different ways. > We all run into things that we want as part of the language, but you > have to consider the return on investment for RunRev. I have been a > member of this list for more years than I care to remember, and the > HyperCard list before that, and this is the FIRST time I have ever > come across anyone wanting syllabic division. > There is no way that RunRev would see this as a worthwhile allocation > of their resources and I for one would be extremely irritated if such > a specialised request got their attention, when there are basic > features that we all would use that still need to be implemented. > > So by all means ask for help on the list, but don't assume that > something should be part of the language, just because you have a > sudden need for it. _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
