Re: [dev] Convert Suckless Projects Documentation to a More Simple Language

On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 09:34:47AM -0400, Kris Maglione wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 02:03:31PM +0100, Ethan Grammatikidis wrote:
> >
> >On 17 Jun 2010, at 11:15, Kris Maglione wrote:
> >
> >>On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 11:59:25AM +0200, pancake wrote:
> >>>When i said toki pona..i was not joking..
> >>>
> >>> http://en.tokipona.org/
> >>>
> >>>you can index the dictionary with a byte.
> >>
> >>It might be alright as a pidgin, but as someone with pronounced
> >>logophilia, I'd tend find it insufferable. Beyond that, it by
> >>nature requires that things which can be said in other
> >>languages in one word. This does recommend it to technical
> >>writing.
> >
> >I'd say I have a little logophillia myself, but I'd rather learn
> >how to combine few short words than memorise numerous long ones.
> >In fact it rather parallels how I'd rather use rc than bourne
> >shell, plan 9 than posix.
>
> I might also add that it would be as aply named if Pona translated
> as New. I'm not necessarily averse to a properly designed
> language[1]; one of Tolkein's might perhaps do nicely. But Toki Pona
> isn't it.
>
> [1] Though, in practice, they tend not to catch. Our brains evolved
> to process languages that grew organically, and they tend to work in
> ideosyncratic ways that we can't really put rules to. And, when we
> come to situations that the language doesn't handle well, we tend to
> improvise without much consideration, so the languages tend to shift
> regardless. Pidgens, used for long enough, turn into creoles without
> exception.
>
> --
> Kris Maglione
>
> I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and all
> my love is toward individuals.
> --Jonathan Swift
>
>

Why to speculate when we already know the answer?

From Wikipedia:

In the field of data compression, Shannon–Fano coding is a technique for
constructing a prefix code based on a set of symbols and their probabilities
(estimated or measured). It is suboptimal in the sense that it does not
achieve the lowest possible expected code word length like Huffman coding;
however unlike Huffman coding, it does guarantee that all code word lengths
are within one bit of their theoretical ideal − logP(x).
Received on Thu Jun 17 2010 - 23:31:21 UTC