Re: Cons cell archaic!?

On Nov 9, 7:17 pm, seeWebInst...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Robert Maas,
http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) wrote:
No. Unlike assembly language (and C), Lisp provides a *structured*
low-level utility for building binary trees, and unlike Java this
binary-tree datatype is efficient in both space and speed.
From: "xah...@xxxxxxxxx" <xah...@xxxxxxxxx>
So you are saying it's a blob of molton, but better blob than C or Java?

No. It's a useful toolkit.
Try to assemble something with wrenches and screwdrivers and other
tools, and it's feasible. Try to assemble it with just clay instead
of tools, and it's impossible.

Yes, as far as analogy goes, when you have power tools, it is much
better than screw, nails, hammers.

list processing facilities in Mathematica, Perl, Python, PHP, are far
more easy, flexible, and powerful, than lisp's cons.

As computing resource and technology progress, going higher level
is natural.

In that case, when building new software applications, you should
prefer Lisp which has lots of high-level tools built-in rather than
Java which has a lesser set of tools or C which has no high-level
tools at all.

Yes. My point was not about lisp is dumber than C or Java. It about
lisp being dumber than Perl, Python, PHP, Mathematica, with respect to
list facilities.

It's not a matter of preference. Lower level lang just gradually
die out.

If and when SysLISP and BootLAP is available in CL or Java, then
indeed we will no longer need either assembly languages or C,
except to re-compile legacy sourcecode. (But with a convertor from
assembly language or C to BootLAP or parsed-C, even legacy
sourcecode could be fed through Lisp or Java to directly generate
executables and device drivers and operating systems etc.)

No comment. My expertise lies not in low level systems.

May i suggest that you pick up the basics of Chinese?

Easier said than done. Several local UHF TV stations broadcast
Chinese-language programs with Chinese-character subtitles. I know
several common charcters (one, two, three, ten, man, large, small,
up, down, sun/day, moon/month, center, country, and maybe a few
more), but there are several more characters that I see very
commonly so that I recognize them each time I see them but I don't
know what they mean. AFAIK there's no lookup/search engine on the
InterNet whereby I can draw a picture of a character and submit it
and get back the information about that character, so I have no
practical way to learn what these recognized characters mean.

if you have the chinese char in your computer, you can just paste it
into online dictionaries. There are lots of such dictionaries, english
to chinese, chinese to english, chinese to chinese.

but if you don't have the char already, you'll need to learn a chinese
input system to type chinese. There are a variety of Chinese input
systems in common use. Basically, there are 2 classes: those based on
phonetics, and those based on the character shape. The phonetics based
ones are easy to learn, but less efficient to type. The char based are
more difficult to learn, but is faster. Among phonetic systems, there
are 2 main classes: those based on pinyin, and those based on
bopomofo, which is a more classic chinese phonetic system. (pinyin is
based on latin alphabets)

In either case, you will need to be familiar with basic chinese before
you can actually learn a chinese input system. Normally, chinese
learners don't start to learn writing/reading chinese until after some
3 or so years of study. Many, if not majority, Chinese as second lang
learners never learned the writing system, even though they are fluent
in listening/speaking. The reason for that is because it is really
difficult. Native chinese typically spent 10 years from grade school
to high school learning it.

but if you are curious, you can follow examples here to type a chinese
char right away in emacs:

http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_n_unicode.html

excerpt:

Q: How to type Chinese?

Regardless what text editor you are using, you need to do two things:
(1) Set your editor's File Encoding system to one that supports your
language. (2) set your Input Method to a particular system suitable
for your language.

File Encoding tells your computer how to map symbols/glyphs/characters
into binary code. Input Method allows you to type languages that are
not based on alphabet. (For example, in Chinese, you cannot just type
a character by pressing a key, instead, you must use a input method to
type Chinese.) For languages based on the Latin alphabet, you don't
need to worry about input method.

To set your file encoding in emacs, use the menu “Options‣Mule
(Multilingual Environment)‣Set Language Environment”.

To set your input method, use the menu “Options‣Mule (Multilingual
Environment)‣Select Input Method...”.

After you've pulled the menu, be sure to also pull the menu command
“Options‣Save Options” so that emacs remembers your settings.

For me, i type Chinese often. There are several encoding systems for
Chinese, for example GB 18030↗, Big5↗, UTF-8↗. I use the UTF-8
encoding system. Among the Chinese input methods↗, i use the Pinyin
method↗. Here's how to set them in emacs without using the menu: “Alt
+x set-language-environment UTF-8” and “Alt+x set-input-method chinese-
py”.

Here's a example of actually typing the Chinese char 美 (meaning
beautiful). Type “Alt+x set-input-method Return chinese-py”, then type
“mei”. Emacs will show you a list of characters with the pronunciation
of mei. Type “2” to pick the right character. Then, emacs will insert
the character. To return to your input method, press “Ctrl+\”.

A in-depth tutorial of using Mac with Chinese is at: http://www.yale.edu/chinesemac/.
It includes comprehensive info and resources on Chinese fonts,
complete tutorials on several Chinese input methods, etc.

--------------------------

I'd
like to set up a lookup/search engie for looking up characters by
shape, but I don't know anyone who knows Chinese who is willing to
help me.

I'm willing to teach in a casual way, you or anyone.
You can meet me in Second Life, i'm Xah Toll there.

i enjoy teaching. But if anyone are serious, and want regular hourly
lessons, please talk to me about it.

For those curious, here's some related link:

• 難懂簡體字表 (Chinese Core Simplified Chars)
http://xahlee.org/lojban/simplified_chars.html

• Lojban A Word A Day (with English and Chinese translation)
http://xahlee.org/lojban/valsi_dikni/valsi_dikni.html

• Chinese Pinyin Letter Frequency
http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/bangu/pinyin_frequency.html

Also, I tried to set up some Web pages that illustrate one
idea I had for describing a character one stroke at a time, by
superimposing several possible characters identified by number in a
character grid but my cellphone doesn't render <pre>..</pre>
sections in fixed-pitch font, so that idea isn't workable, and I
have to think of some other idea. Here's the URL of that prototype
that looks fine on desktop Web browsers but doesn't work on my
cellphone:
<http://www.rawbw.com/~rem/WAP/ChineseInput/start1.html>

that's weird. You methods are weird...

There are lots of websites that teach Chinese. Wikipedia has lots of
articles on Chinese too... worth at least few days of reading. (i've
more or less read them all in the past few years) e.g. articlese on
the lang in general, on its grammar, competing phonetic systems,
writing system, history of its writing system, morphology,
pronunciation, ... its current and past use in Japanese, Korean,
Vietnemese writing systems ..., political controversy between the
china and taiwan lots on simplified char vs traditional char and
romanization systems... lots.

i don't understand why can't you find a job or your personal problems
of debt... Chances are, you are not that interested in solving your
problems.

Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄

.

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