Am Samstag, 12. November 2005 23:13 schrieb Jean-Marc Orliaguet: > Helmut Merz wrote: > >Maybe there is a better word for this kind of 'relation'? > > > >Helmut > > I don't know. I think you have to start from a definition that > is not dependent on zope in general and understand what the > concepts mean outside the computer world. This was not > invented here. > > The "relations" used in software are more than just relations > since they also assert something, and a relation by itself > asserts nothing, it is just an abstraction that connect > several things or aspects of things. So "relations" here are > rather "propositions". > > for instance: > "A blue box" involves a relation between the "box" and the > quality "blue", but to represent the relation, you would to > assert a proposition: > > "The box is blue"
Thanks for the clarification, and I think I got it - though I have to admit that I got the feeling that my brain is not really built to work with formal logic in a practical way ;-) So my suggestion would be to go the pragmatic way an just keep the word "relation" for representing the assertion of such propositions in software. I'll be going to write a Zope 3 proposal on on the relation management stuff (in the first step only on the interfaces trying not to talk about implementation issues) and would gladly expect your comments then... I think we cannot alway avoid words defined in another problem domain in a different way, which may be problem especially if the problem domains are related (like formal logic and computer science); but I'd care not to use a nomenclature that might confuse or mislead people knowing more about some stuff than me. Anyway, what we are talking about are not "references". > The proposition can be analysed. It has a predicate and a > subject (or subjects if taken individually), the subject is an > ordered tuple and the predicate is what is left of the > proposition when the subjects have been removed (it is what is > "predicated", or asserted of the subjects of the proposition) > > for instance in the proposition: > > "The box is blue" > > the predicate "__ is blue" predicates "blueness" of the box > > but a predicate is not the same thing as a relation Yup - I'm at the moment using the word "predicate" to signify a type of a relation (using it as a homonym to "relationship") though I'm again not sure if this might be plainly wrong or at least confusing. Helmut _______________________________________________ Zope3-dev mailing list Zope3-dev@zope.org Unsub: http://mail.zope.org/mailman/options/zope3-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com