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Re: About "set bits"
From: |
Barry Margolin |
Subject: |
Re: About "set bits" |
Date: |
Thu, 11 Apr 2013 11:19:54 -0400 |
User-agent: |
MT-NewsWatcher/3.5.3b3 (Intel Mac OS X) |
In article <mailman.23943.1365669842.855.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>,
Thien-Thi Nguyen <ttn@gnuvola.org> wrote:
> () Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu>
> () Wed, 10 Apr 2013 11:37:19 -0400
>
> phrases as computer or Emacs jargon, when they just have the meaning
> the words imply.
>
> Assuming that one can parse "set bit" as ADJ N, there is still room for
> confusion. Being around computers for a long time, i interpret "set" as
> "having value 1", but recognize anyway that such is not universal.
>
> For example, in the phrase "ready, set, go", the state "set" gives the
> impression of suspense, promise, potential. The poet in me imagines how
> zero embodies that, mapping these states to -1, 0, and 1, respectively.
>
> "But ttn, we're talking about Emacs Lisp and specifically binary data!"
>
> Yes. No one is born programmer or poet, yet both can hack (in) Emacs.
> What is confusion but a stretching of the mind? What is Emacs but
> confusion, parenthesized and shared?
True, these phrases can be ambiguous. But often the context and examples
help quite a bit in figuring out the intent. In this case, there were a
couple of examples; "bits" tells you to think in binary, and if you
examined the binary values of the examples it should quickly become
apparent what was meant.
--
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***