If we have a language, say "Foo", and it's (only) interpreter is written in C, we could of course say:
"The Foo interpreter is written in C"
However, would it make sense to shorten this to:
"Foo is written in C"
I found this example on a Wikipedia page discussing a language and I feel like this second sentence is ambiguous and confusing enough to be incorrect.
Thoughts?
Related
I'm hoping for help with what is probably a very simple question. But, in Classical Mechanics physics textbook by Goldstein, 3rd edition, in section 2.2 "Some Techniques of the Calculus of Variations" the author states this:
Relation of a to c is a straight line
But, this is clearly the equation of a straight line,
y = ax + b,
So, please forgive my lack of knowledge of this probably very simple algebra question. But, I don't see how a = c/stuff is actually the equation of a straight line.
Many many thanks.
You are using the word relation differently than the book is using it.
You see the word "relation" as "equality" like a = c. They aren't using that sense of the word. In their description there are two things, a and c, and a third thing "the relation" which is something that is a "straight line"
So, from my reading of the information (which might be wrong, but there is no extra information to help me avoid something like a guess) they are describing a straight line between points a and c.
I need to say a sentence, with a german name in the sentence. To do so I used Microsoft speech with english, called the speakasync function to say the first part of the sentence, then changed Language to german, said the name, then went back to english and finished the sentence. this all works well, except that each time i call the speakasync function the is a 1 second pause. so I have 1 second pause before and after the name. can this be removed somehow? I would like to have no pause in between.
s.SetOutputToDefaultAudioDevice()
s.SelectVoice(myENGLISHvoice)
s.SpeakAsync("Next on the line is mr. ")
s.SelectVoice(myGERMANvoice)
s.SpeakAsync("Stefan Hanswurst")
s.SelectVoice(myENGLISHvoice)
s.SpeakAsync("Please stand up.")
Update, I have also tried this, with no success.. same problem:
pb.AppendSsmlMarkup("<voice xml:lang=""en-EN"">")
pb.AppendText("Next on the line is mr.")
pb.AppendSsmlMarkup("</voice>")
pb.AppendSsmlMarkup("<voice xml:lang=""de-DE"">")
pb.AppendText("Hansjörg Bratwurst ")
pb.AppendSsmlMarkup("</voice>")
pb.AppendSsmlMarkup("<voice xml:lang=""en-EN"">")
pb.AppendText("Please stand up.")
pb.AppendSsmlMarkup("</voice>")
In context of speech engines you usually avoid switching language during speech output, this is unusual since humans also simply stick to one pronounciation (see how Americans and Italiens pronounce coffee or Cappuccino for example).
Usually this is done by inserting pronounciation hints for "foreign" words into the language you currently generate output for. Just like Germans have to learn how to pronounce "Cappuccino" and it will still always have a German accent/specific to it.
See details for microsofts speech API here (search for "pronunciation"-> they have a spelling error on the page):
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh378454(v=office.14).aspx
I saw this question and it got me wondering.
Ignoring the fact that pretty much all languages have to be backwards compatible, is there any reason we cannot use operators as both keywords and functions, depending on if it's immediately followed by a parenthesis? Would it make the grammar harder?
I'm thinking mostly of python, but also C-like languages.
Perl does something very similar to this, and the results are sometimes surprising. You'll find warnings about this in many Perl texts; for example, this one comes from the standard distributed Perl documentation (man perlfunc):
Any function in the list below may be used either with or without parentheses around its arguments. (The syntax descriptions omit the parentheses.) If you use parentheses, the simple but occasionally surprising rule is this: It looks like a function, therefore it is a function, and precedence doesn't matter. Otherwise it's a list operator or unary operator, and precedence does matter. Whitespace between the function and left parenthesis doesn't count, so sometimes you need to be careful:
print 1+2+4; # Prints 7.
print(1+2) + 4; # Prints 3.
print (1+2)+4; # Also prints 3!
print +(1+2)+4; # Prints 7.
print ((1+2)+4); # Prints 7.
An even more surprising case, which often bites newcomers:
print
(a % 7 == 0 || a % 7 == 1) ? "good" : "bad";
will print 0 or 1.
In short, it depends on your theory of parsing. Many people believe that parsing should be precise and predictable, even when that results in surprising parses (as in the Python example in the linked question, or even more famously, C++'s most vexing parse). Others lean towards Perl's "Do What I Mean" philosophy, even though the result -- as above -- is sometimes rather different from what the programmer actually meant.
C, C++ and Python all tend towards the "precise and predictable" philosophy, and they are unlikely to change now.
Depending on the language, not() is not defined. If not() is not defined in some language, you can not use it. Why not() is not defined in some language? Because creator of that language probably had not need this type of language construction. Because it is better to let things be simpler.
I didn't touch Prolog since high-school, and even though I've tried to find the info, it didn't help. Below is the example that has to illustrate my problem:
%% everybody():- [dana, cody, bess, abby].
%% Everybody = [dana, cody, bess, abby].
likes(dana, cody).
hates(bess, dana).
hates(cody, abby).
hates(X, Y):- \+ likes(X, Y).
likes_somebody(_, []):- fail.
likes_somebody(X, [girl | others]):-
likes(X, girl) ; likes_somebody(X, others).
likes_everybody(_, []):- true.
likes_everybody(X, [girl | others]):-
likes(X, girl) , likes_everybody(X, others).
maplist(likes_somebody, [dana, cody, bess, abby], [dana, cody, bess, abby]).
How do I declare everybody to just be the list of girls? The commented lines are those which I've tried, but I've got bizarre error messages back.
This is the tutorial I followed more or less so far. I'm using GProlog, if it makes any difference. Sorry for such a basic question. GProlog's manual doesn't deal with language syntax, but I've certainly looked there. As an aside, I would be grateful for information on where to look for language documentation (as opposed to implementation documentation).
Every variable in Prolog must begin with an uppercase letter. So for starters, you want Everybody, not everybody.
Second problem, variables in Prolog are not assignables. So probably what you want to do is make a fact and use that instead:
everybody([dana, cody, bess, abby]).
Your bottom line of code is actually a fact definition and will attempt to overwrite maplist/3. What you probably want to do is put everything above that line into a file (say, called likes.pl) and then consult it ([likes].). Then you can run a query like this:
?- everybody(Everybody), maplist(likes_somebody, Everybody, Everybody).
This won't work, because likes_somebody/2 processes a list in the second argument. The predicate you have for likes_somebody/2 could be written:
likes_somebody(_, []).
but still won't mean much. It simply unifies anything with the empty list:
?- likes_somebody(chicken_tacos, []).
true.
You really need a predicate to tell you if someone is a girl, like this:
girl(dana).
girl(cody).
girl(bess).
girl(abby).
Then you could do what I think you're trying to do, which is something closer to this:
likes_somebody(X) :- girl(X).
Then the maplist construction would work like this:
everybody(Everybody), maplist(likes_somebody, Everybody).
Which would simply return true. You could simplify and eliminate everybody/1 by instead using findall(Girl, girl(X), Everybody) but it's getting weird.
You're trying to do list processing with likes_everybody/2, but it's broken because girl is literally girl, not a variable, and others is literally others, not a list of some kind that could be the tail of another list.
I think you still have some old ideas you need to cleanse. Read some more, write some more, and your code will start to make a lot more sense.
We are currently implementing a Zend Framework Project, that needs to be translated in 6 different languages. We already have a pretty sophisticated translation system, based on Zend_Translate, which also handles variables in translation keys.
Our project has a new Turkish translator, and we are facing a new issue: Grammar, especially Turkish one. I noticed that this problem might be evident in every translation system and in most languages, so I posted a question here.
Question: Any ideas how to handle translations like:
Key: I have a[n] {fruit}
Variables: apple, banana
Result: I have an apple. I have a banana.
Key: Stimme für {user}[s] Einsendung
Variables: Paul, Markus
Result: Stimme für Pauls Einsendung,
Result: Stimme für Markus Einsendung
Anybody has a solution or idea for this? My only guess would be to avoid this by not using translations where these issues occur.
How do other platforms handle this?
Of course the translation system has no idea which type of word it is placing where in which type of Sentence. It only does some string replacements...
PS: Turkish is even more complicated:
For example, on a profile page, we have "Annie's Network". This should translate as "Annie'nin Aği".
If the first name ends in a vowel, the suffix will start with an n and look like "Annie'nin"
If the first name ends in a consonant, it will not have the first n, and look like "Kris'in"
If the last vowel is an a or ı, it will look like "Dan'ın"; or Seyma'nın"
If the last vowel is an o or u, it will look like "Davud'un"; or "Burcu'nun"
If the last vowel is an e or i, it will look like "Erin'in"; or "Efe'nin"
If the last vowel is an ö or ü, it will look like "Göz'ün'; or "Iminönü'nün"
If the last letter is a k (like the name "Basak"), it will look like "Basağın"; or "Eriğin"
It is actually very hard problem, as grammar rules are different even among languages from the same family. I don't think you could easily do anything for let's say Slavic languages...
However, if you want to solve this problem (because this is extra challenging) and you are looking for creative (cross inspiring) ways to do that, you might want to look into something called ChoiceFormat (example would be one from ICU Project) or you can look up GNU Gettext's solution for plural forms problem.
ICU (mentioned above) has a SelectFormat http://site.icu-project.org/design/formatting/select that may be of help- it's like a choice format but with arbitrary keywords. Also, it does have a PluralFormat which already has rules for many language's plural rules.