> lots of unexplained grandiose thinking like “ k and q made the vector the unit of thought.”
That much makes sense in context: K is an array language, like APL, J, etc. From what little experience I have with J, ‘vector as a unit of thought’ seems like a reasonable description.
That’s fair: The most fair-to-submitter reading of your comment is my concerns are unfounded. If you didn’t intend that, that’s fine.
For moderators, I’d suggest that for the community, it’s spam. That’s one example, there are many more like it. The individual statement may be defensible but is still pseudoscientific language. This sort of content is a massive burden to community. Unanswerable anrguments about AI writing, whether the ability for an individual to have a parse-able reading is the same as writing being parable. The net effect is negative experiences for many and copy-editing for someone who did not do copy editing.
The 'unit of thought' thing is a nod to the Ken Iverson paper on APL that won him the Turing Award ("Notation as a Tool of Thought"), also referenced by Dyalog's tag line "The tool of thought for software solutions"). Variations of that phrase are endemic in the array languages space.
> People in Western countries don't realize how bad the situation on the ground actually is; random Ukrainian flags showing up on your work monitor can result in severe problems for you (like losing you job, or worse), especially if you work in the government sector. If they show up on your laptop in a random cafe or an airport, you might very well get a beating from one of many "war heroes" that walk around the cities these days.
Oh no! Imagine the horror of losing your job. It compares nothing to literal genocide their army perpetrating.
And yes, it is their, not their government, not some mysterious leaders. Russians reelected same government for 35 years with it invading neighbours pretty much every 5 years.
Imagine living in the occupied part and being sent to the basement for this. Probably not that black and white now... although seeing both activist and slacktivist types being very loud about the land but not the people over and over again, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if you don't care.
you mean nationalists/imperialists like Navalny whose main beef with current russian administration is that is corrupt, meaning it is not being effective enough?
Honestly, not sure why westerners yearn to find good fascists.
In Naskh, each letter has only four forms (for the most part — there are a few ligatures etc. but I think ‘only four forms’ remains basically true). The choice between forms is determined almost entirely by position within a word (initial/medial/final/isolated). All the letters are aligned along the baseline and connect to each other in basically the same way.
By contrast Nastaliq is a much more complicated style. Many letters and letter combinations take on several different forms depending on which other letters surround them. Letter joins are usually diagonal, so letters earlier in a word need to be shifted above the baseline by a variable amount. Having to shift letters vertically as well as horizontally greatly complicates other aspects of the style too.
(I recall seeing a nice table some time ago showing all the various different possibilities for letter joins in Nastaliq. Unfortunately I can’t seem to find it again. Still, you might get some idea by consulting the documentation of one of the existing Nastaliq fonts, e.g. Awami Nastaliq: https://software.sil.org/awami/what-is-special/)
Yeah, but the difficulty isn't in rendering the fonts, it's for the font creator. So once the font is ready with all the combinations it rendering and using a Nastaliq font doesn't differ with rendering a Naskh. Nastaliq fonts are available in Persian, not sure if true for other languages, but it's just more complexity on making the font. For using a ready font the only thing needed is permission to change the font.
afaik this is a non-issue with modern text rendering engines.
Modern font files include rulesets to determine the forms and shaping engines apply these rules to eventually reach the desired "shape" (i.e. order, position and which glyphs to render).
For example, if you use HarfBuzz it should be able to calculate the Glyphs and offsets you need for a properly set script.
I personally spent way to much time trying to understand it, but at least according to this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaA0v0V4RsU) it really is not that difficult if you leave out all the font-selection and emoji shenanigans.
I think at least FreeType (glyph rendering) and HarfBuzz (text shaping) make it needlessly complex through their documentation.
It is extensive in describing what the parts do, but the only way to figure out what you need is by fiddling around. As soon as you want to do more complex stuff you're on your own. Especially figuring out which parts you don't need is annoying.
Alright, I'll do that. Although, sadly, I already posted it here, so I won't be able to post it again — I'll be stuck with this trash comments section that doesn't deal with any of the actual claims, just the aesthetics.
Their terminology is odd. The thing you move while playing is generally called the hand slide. There's nearly always a separate tuning slide located in the crook of the bell section.
(Some relatively rare instruments like the Shires Alto do "tuning in slide" with a mechanism for fine adjustment in the hand slide).
If you're also moving the tuning slide in the middle of a piece you're probably a bass trombonist doing the now-impossible glissando (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWJPeA_1g48) in the Bartok concerto for orchestra.
I was thinking the same thing. The tuning slide is not what you use while playing, it's the separate slide on the bell side of the trombone for fine adjustment to ensure you're in tune with the rest of the band.
Do you mainly control pitch with the tuning slide or the valves on those instruments? I think you mainly control pitch with the valves and only supplement with a tuning slide for certain notes, depending on the instrument, and therefore the statement is accurate.
Mainly the valves. The tuning slides help with a number of things, including the fact that the harmonics (notes above the first ocatave) are not precisely in tune with the fundamentals. A trumpet typically has a trigger lever or a loop for your finger on one or two of the tuning slides.
You use it as needed. If you're playing a really fast passage, you'll likely skip it, but shorter notes are harder to place the precise pitch anyway.
If you really want to see tuning slides in action, find a video of a good tuba soloist.
Interesting. A student horn I guess? I've never owned one that didn't have at least a third valve slide ring. I think they were widespread around the time that the trumpet really took over from the cornet, around 1900-1920. My pre-War Olds has moving slides.
The interrupting parenthetical was so disruptive to the sentence that I thought it said, essentially, "The trombone is the only brass instrument. Parenthetical. The trombone is played by moving the slide."
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