On Dec 4, 2005, at 8:35 AM, Marty Billingsley wrote:
Just asking if Transcript, which has been made English-like in the first instance (the setting of the property by using the verb "hide") can be extended to be English-like in the second instance (accessing the state of the property by using the adjective "hidden").
The thing that prevents any programming language from completely matching English (and I suspect any other language although I'm not a linguist so maybe this is wrong) is that English is not a precise language; English statements are unambiguous. Context helps but does not resolve the issue. Programming languages, at least until such time as someone comes up with one which is capable of divining what we want the computer to do w rather than what we told it to do, MUST be unambiguous.
The ambiguity here is that "is" generally essentially means "equivalence" or "identity" but you want to use it here to mean "has the property of". Thus the issue is not really the problem of "hide" versus "hidden", verb vs. adjective, but rather the explicit nature of "is". "Field xxx" is NOT hidden, it is "Field xxx" or some other designation which defines the same. I am "Jim Spencer" or "Employee 2137" or "the man who lives at a particular address in Rochester"; I am not "fat" even if I am and even if that would be correct conversational English.
Yes, you can special case particular words like hidden but that may be worse: now you have to remember or look up to see if this is one of the verbs that sets a property that you can refer to by its adjective. I personally prefer linguistic consistency even if it sometimes requires a statement form which would be awkward (but note: not incorrect) in conversational speech.
James P. Spencer Rochester, MN [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Badges?? We don't need no stinkin badges!" _______________________________________________ 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
