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“I just chose words carefully”

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Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#131

Post by pmontra »

AgentOrange1234 wrote: post #109

In programming certain word choices are valuable in this way. It's sad that pairs like true/false, good/bad, first/rest, and left/right are unequal length. But there are nice pairs like old/new, head/tail, fast/slow, same/diff, and right/wrong, which can help with create natural vertical alignment throughout a function.

Ah, but I use a normal proportional font in my editor so same and diff have different widths.

That was the fun comment. The serious ones:

1. I'm trading the ability to align statements on consecutive lines for a more pleasant reading experience.

2. Nobody ever complained that my source code is

  a = 1
  ab = 2
  abc = 3
instead of

  a   = 1
  ab  = 2
  abc = 3
3. No tables or diagrams in comments of course but I think that I could configure my editor (emacs) to use a monospaced font there. I do use a monospaced font for the ``` ``` blocks of md files.

4. I'm using Atkinson Hyperlegible Next https://www.brailleinstitute.org/freefont/

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#132

Post by sipjca »

nvme0n1p1 wrote: post #83
scott_weber wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here I at first thought the direction the original post was going was "here's how I got a LLM to do this automatically". Seems like it would not be so difficult. Might still be be a win over their innate dispositions.

Tom 7 did something like this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y65FRxE7uMc > BoVeX gives us a controlled tradeoff between these two states. By changing how much it costs for the text to be semantically wrong, we have a dial that allows us to smoothly interpolate between Lorem Epsom and Donald Knuth.

it's unbelievable this was not pointed out earlier in this thread, long live tom 7

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#134

Post by Biganon »

_jackdk_ wrote: post #16

I wonder if at any point during writing, the heroic author of that Super Metroid guide learned that "missiles" are not spent "missles", and decided to own the mistake rather than reword the entire guide. Also, the font used for the monospace examples in the post is a great kick to the nostalgia. Which one is it? It reminds me of https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/fontlist/font?ibm_vga_...

Funny tidbit: "missile" used to be an adjective, "a missile weapon" = "a weapon than can be sent/thrown".

Same with cereals, "cereal" was an adjective that meant "relative to the goddess Ceres" then "relative to bread/wheat". "Cereal plants" -> cereals.

It's called "nominalization (or substantivization) by ellipsis".

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#135

Post by jjsjsjsiw »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #123
AgentOrange1234 wrote: post #109

In programming certain word choices are valuable in this way. It's sad that pairs like true/false, good/bad, first/rest, and left/right are unequal length. But there are nice pairs like old/new, head/tail, fast/slow, same/diff, and right/wrong, which can help with create natural vertical alignment throughout a function.

> It's sad that pairs like true/false, good/bad, first/rest, and left/right are unequal length. You're just matching them wrong. On/off and yes/no may look unequal, but what about yes/off or on/no?

This reminds me of all the (fun) times I had coming across “enable toggle” and “disabler enabler”.

Bonus points for taking “YES” (looking at you FreeBSD) or “1” or “ON”.

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#136

Post by Groxx »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #98
crooked-v wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, any concern about text widows and orphans in modern app layouts becomes irrelevant as soon as you have to localize. Just build your layout so it can squash/stretch appropriately.

Or if you're really insane, localize the entire UI.

And accessibilize it. Pixel perfect per zoom level per language per font variant per font.

Don't forget increased-contrast too!

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#139

Post by Valodim »

somat wrote: post #45
kibwen wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> learned that "missiles" are not spent "missles" I choose to believe that the author was channeling the spirit of Noah Webster as a deliberate champion of phonetic spelling reform.

Or Andrew Jackson approaching the problem from the other end. “It is a damn poor mind indeed which can't think of at least two ways to spell any word.” As a rather, well... "creative" speller I blame Webster for locking things down and ruining it for the rest of us.

Different languages went down different paths in this regard, each with their own interesting advantages and disadvantages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthographic_depth

Re: “I just chose words carefully”

#140

Post by taneq »

Biganon wrote: post #134
_jackdk_ wrote: post #16

I wonder if at any point during writing, the heroic author of that Super Metroid guide learned that "missiles" are not spent "missles", and decided to own the mistake rather than reword the entire guide. Also, the font used for the monospace examples in the post is a great kick to the nostalgia. Which one is it? It reminds me of https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/fontlist/font?ibm_vga_...

Funny tidbit: "missile" used to be an adjective, "a missile weapon" = "a weapon than can be sent/thrown". Same with cereals, "cereal" was an adjective that meant "relative to the goddess Ceres" then "relative to bread/wheat". "Cereal plants" -> cereals. It's called "nominalization (or substantivization) by ellipsis".

Reminds me of how some people (groups? cultures?) call a lathe a “lathe machine.”
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