If you've ever waded hip deep into publication technology, you can see how the 2nd CE heading has moved down, down, down, down all the way to the individual word level, in something like a DITA `conref` where the individual word is a reference.
Even though DITA pays my checks, I've always been apprehensive about functionality like `conref`[1] in a general-purpose document. You can only fuss with natural language for so long before you're not a document anymore, and if you're not a document . . well, what are you doing? Why are we here? You've built a conceptual box that's better done in an actual programming language.
But no one's going to argue about the utility of headings (hmm except for the DITA architects, who have disposed of it in favor of a nested transclusion of `topicrefs`). This sort of article is always fascinating, although it is just as concerned with fiction prose.
Off topic, the following would prove darkly prophetic:
Early modern intellectuals like Robert Boyle and John Locke would even rail against Biblical chaptering: Boyle complained of its ‘inconvenient Distinction’, which ‘hath sometimes Sever’d Matters that should have been left United’; Locke for his part despaired that the system of chapter-and-verse left scripture ‘so chop’d and minc’d […] so broken and divided’ that not only do the ‘Common People take the Verses usually for distinct aphorisms’, but even the educated have their powers of memory enfeebled.
[1] I'm calling out DITA but it's also mechanisms in S1000D and DocBook, and you can do the same in Asciidoc (include directive to region) or ReStructuredText (same). The XML specs are clunkier, but the basic concept is the same.
> he system of chapter-and-verse left scripture ‘so chop’d and minc’d […] so broken and divided’
I don't get the problem. You never hear them, and when you read them yourself, you also just ignore them. When your starting at a chapter, just read the last few verses of the previous to get the context.
I'm sorry to bug you, but can you link up the docs / news / cite for that? Will they need to replace their XSL with some JS/TS/Whatever, or can you just stick a converter so the XSL gets interpreted as something legal? What do they need serverside?
I foresee a LOT of this "Panic Replace XSL" work landing right in my lap and if someone's already done the work I want to know about it.
XSLT is by and large single-threaded, and most jobs in the print domain get horrifyingly ginormous due to basic conceptual flaws of XML/XSL. Your Operations guys might have a panic attack when they see how that impacts on the server side. But then, to mitigate that, someone's going to need to cook a queueing system with some kind of notification/email doohickey, and now the InfoSec guys are also having a panic attack.
You're probably going to save money, end of the day, just homebrewing some XSL drop ins with a real programming language.
I gotta say, as a mostly-defense XSL guy[1] who also knows his way around TS and Py, this is probably going to be a real boom time to kick this dumb XSLT work to the curb and do some high dollar contracting making JS/TS drop-ins for govcons and defense.
[1] Who also thinks XSLT is a joke told by an idiot. My morale? Oh, it's great.
My "cognitive white noise generator" has been locked on emergent spacetime for a decade now. The idea here, and I'm very loosely summarizing, is that the dimensions themselves are emergent properties of large scale entanglement - the mathematical "dimensions" resolve quite well into flesh and blood, "this is a chair" dimensions.
I'm right with you on this. It just makes so much sense to me. It makes sense imo, given any large system in distributed programming needs to be coherent to work. AFAIK coherence is entanglement. So in order for the system to have an actually meaningful, consistent structure, there needs to be some sort of synchronization/coherence. In distributed systems, you need both time and space (propagation delay and # coherent/up to date nodes for a given "quanta" of information exchange) before you can complete a "strongly consistent" read or write. Trying to ask the system for coherent state about anything in an update on timescales finer than the propagation delay or using less than the required # of nodes for consistency is kind of nonsensical.
Idk. In general, the idea of emergence seems to be the best answer we have for a ton of physical phenomena around us. I'm betting/putting my faith that gravity could end up one as well, unless/until someone proves otherwise.
This. Is. Pure. Catnip. For. Me. What a new years present. Thanks for sending this along.
As always, a bit miffed they don't mention Asciidoc, which has formal functionalities in core (transclusion, conditionals) without needing template languages or entering extension-landia.
But about that - I'm not convinced that non-natural language functionality like transclusion even belong in the content layer. Tech pubs teams always, always, always underestime the complexity of an interface between natural language and formalist structures (transclusion, conditionals). Ah, and the authors go through this. Boy oh boy, can I say thanks again? I've been looking for a paper in this vein for literal decades, as I lack the deep math.
Qui Gonn Jinns saber in that scene is outputting at least 321,260,978 KW. So yup.
Note from the world of Star Wars gamemastering in old fashioned simulationism: most trauma from DEWS interaction with human or organic target is still kinetic, because penetration of even an inch or two immediately creates a pretty intense steam explosion. A "plasma bolt" that instantaneously burned through into the thoracic cavity would be messier than force feeding the target a hand grenade. More like a stick of dynamite. "Clean" laser weapons of science fiction would not be the reality; lasers powerful enough to cut off arms would be making meaty explosions. This sounds like a super duper efficient way to trauma, but it's still magic. That's a TON of energy - throwing an equivalent ball of explosive is easier and doesn't waste 90% of the emitter power on heating up air.
Even though DITA pays my checks, I've always been apprehensive about functionality like `conref`[1] in a general-purpose document. You can only fuss with natural language for so long before you're not a document anymore, and if you're not a document . . well, what are you doing? Why are we here? You've built a conceptual box that's better done in an actual programming language.
But no one's going to argue about the utility of headings (hmm except for the DITA architects, who have disposed of it in favor of a nested transclusion of `topicrefs`). This sort of article is always fascinating, although it is just as concerned with fiction prose.
Off topic, the following would prove darkly prophetic:
Early modern intellectuals like Robert Boyle and John Locke would even rail against Biblical chaptering: Boyle complained of its ‘inconvenient Distinction’, which ‘hath sometimes Sever’d Matters that should have been left United’; Locke for his part despaired that the system of chapter-and-verse left scripture ‘so chop’d and minc’d […] so broken and divided’ that not only do the ‘Common People take the Verses usually for distinct aphorisms’, but even the educated have their powers of memory enfeebled.
[1] I'm calling out DITA but it's also mechanisms in S1000D and DocBook, and you can do the same in Asciidoc (include directive to region) or ReStructuredText (same). The XML specs are clunkier, but the basic concept is the same.