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Timlan Team account

Posted On Wednesday 22 February 2012 by Timlan Team (timlanami_ludef)

We might use it. We might not. We'll decide. So there.

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Timlan Rolls Onward

Posted On Wednesday 22 February 2012 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

Howdy, Folks! All is fine and dandy where we live and work on Timlan, so, here is a nice update on what we are doing ATM and all that Jazz:

Clarity Clarification Project
So far, we've clarified about 1/3 of our words (ignoring elements), and any new words we add are being added properly. (its really tedious work).

Many thanks to Wiktionary for providing generally viable definitions. The CCP has helped me to realise how dreadful the English dictionary is, its truley horrible.

The Great Verb Project (a subset of the CCP) is working out fine, our simple syntax seems to work. Don't forget that this lushness works alongside Timlan's perfectly inferable sentence structure, you don't need to know any words syntax to work out a sentence structure, though you may be unable to derive any meaning.

Fixionary
Say, that word reminds me of the word Dictionary! This is intentional, it is a dictionary of affixes, you guessed right (hopefully): we have FINALLY got around to making the afix list an online system, and soon will be modifying software to utilise this. Rejoice!

{{Insert Link To Fixionary Listing Page (Build Fixionary Listing Page)}}

Alongside this grand progression, we will be writing individual blog posts for each and every affix, with detailed information about them and extencive examples. This will take a while, as we want to make these posts both coherent && meaningful, which will be first for us (ish).

Chemistry??
Having decided that Timlan is totally epic, we intend to add full chemical compound support (like with elements). This is currently !(quite working) but isn't far off (we want it to support structure, which may take some thinking).

Random Facts
Known Timlan Speakers: 2
Current Word Count: 381 words (+elements)
Our rough accessment of Lojban: tacky
Theoretically you can learn Timlan with just 3 documents:
- Dictionary
- Fixionary
- Fonti.txt

tokouhaht setuh sui

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Affix changes again? YES, TIS TURE

Posted On Tuesday 7 February 2012 by Murray Colpman (Muzer)

Two more affix-related changes have occurred due to our making the fixionary and noticing silly things:

* -ah has been split off into two, -ah and -ame. Don't worry, we haven't done a U-turn on ordinal numbers; this is something else. Words that apply to whole clauses are split off into -ame, and take the old "as" long form (with the peve preposition marker) that the always did; -ah still has the rest with the "iq" long form. It all makes more sense this way.
* Modal verbs now have a long form! It's using mqdq. You don't make it a preposition as it isn't; it affects the meaning of the sentence. You just say: mqdqeht carun eatelem hat~s ei (I can eat pasta). This way, you can say mqdqeht ceveand carun musisen heekaht setuh ei (I can and must die).

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Superlatives

Posted On Monday 6 February 2012 by Murray Colpman (Muzer)

Despite entitling the other blog post "Comparatives/Superlatives", we never actually touched on superlatives on the web (we did a bit on IRC I believe).

This is how you do them:

(="My cat is more good compared to all cats")

Simples!

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peceheekeht setuh /"ota"/

Posted On Monday 6 February 2012 by Murray Colpman (Muzer)

We've decided that, since we've generalised -eta to mean determiners, we've also decided that -ota needs sorting out. And it's going to be sorted out by merging it with -ah. Here are the reasons:

* Like -ah, ordinal numbers are attributes of the noun (the first cat will forever remain the first cat, no matter which weird sentences he may be in that may or may not specify this)
* number-ah thing was previously undefined.


So, -ota is now permanently dead. FOREVER. All previous uses will now be served by -ah.

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StandardFormFace

Posted On Tuesday 31 January 2012 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

As you probably know, the only Timlan consonants not used in our number system are x and y. BUT, this has changed.

Now, x- means "times 0x10 to the power of".

For example:

c-d-b-b-b-b-
is 0x120000

but you can now say

c-z-d-x-h-

alternatively

c-d-x-g-

So, this works.

Some day y- may be put to good use, BUT THAT DAY IS NOT TODAY.

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Timlan Word Count += 100 (and a bit)

Posted On Sunday 29 January 2012 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

Not sure how many elements there are, BUT WE HAVE THEM NOW.

In Timlan, we like to make life easy, like, you know, making everything amke sense, and not be stupid.

Now, we recognise that Scientists like this also, so we are using the Standard Symbols for elements so that we don't have to come up with our own names, I mean, be consitent and all.

To make an element, stick 'eli' at the start, and another 'i' between any remaining chars in the symbol.

Examples

Hydrogen, H, elih
Silicon, Si, elisii (glotal stop, remember)
Potassium, K, elik

If you don't like the symbols, use the elements atomic numbers:

c-ota eli (1st element, Hydrogen)

That better not need explaining.

tokouhaht setuh sui

Reminder: DO NOT diphthongise 'iw' (in eliw (tungsten)) AND SUCH

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SOPA/PIPA blackout.

Posted On Tuesday 17 January 2012 by Murray Colpman (Muzer)

You know that thing that Wikipedia is doing, to protest against SOPA/PIPA?

We are too, though I assume not many will care, it's still FUN



The only thing that will stay up is the machine-readable (plain) Timlan dictionary. Only the website will be affected; everything else hosted on the server will stay up (so IRC, mail, and some external sites, etc.).

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Comparatives/superlatives

Posted On Sunday 8 January 2012 by Murray Colpman (Muzer)

CATS WILL BE USED IN THE EXAMPLES. IF YOU HAVE AN AVERSION TO CATS, LOOK AWAY NOW.


OK. Comparing things to other things. We've sort of had vague ideas on having this construct for years but none of us have actually sat down and worked it out...

We've added a new verb, compar, which is always used in a relative clause. We have also tightened definitions of the two mores (which are both now determiners):

erom = to a greater extent:

"Cat is more good compared to dog"
(Cats and dogs in general due to lack of determiner)

vintitia = additional; more in quantity:

"I have additional/more cats compared to you"


So you can sort of see the syntax from that... ANY QUESTIONS NON-EXISTANT READERS????

1 Comments

Determiners

Posted On Sunday 8 January 2012 by Murray Colpman (Muzer)

We have realised that determiners exist, and aren't the same as adjectives (which are nouns)

And we've also realised LEese ARe NoT In MaLtA Now.

And we've also realised that some of our existing words are determiners, and so are cardinal numbers.

So it stands to reason to use the cardinal postfix for all determiners. These are words like all (ayik), this (selux), etc. that are like adjectives that instead of describing attributes of a noun, describe information about a noun that might be valid only in that context.

So

seluxeta hat~s

= this pasta

etc.

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dVocab/dt

Posted On Saturday 7 January 2012 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

Its Change Vocab with respect to Time again, and todays topic is Mathematics.

To clarify, that is Mathematics, not Programming, so no distinct assignment and comparision operators.

This also comes with a lush syntax for handeling maths, which we've spent most of the last 2 days working on. Hopefully the time has paid off, in a !commercial sense.

Now some vocab... This first list of verbs will all always take the 'elem' (general) tense, as maths doesn't change of time like the Timlan vocab.

pad - Add
sub - Subtract
mul - Multiply
div - Divide
mod - Modulate
var - Variable
cost - Constant
ras - Raise to the Power
eq - equals

These words are used for making maths work in-line.

solute - Solve
eval - Evaluate

Now the fun parts that have NOTHING to do with vocab.

How to build expressions

Timlan having a VOS syntax, this is fairly evident.

In common SVO notation nonsense, you might write:

(4 + 2) / 2 = 3

In Timlan, using symbols this would be:

= 3 / 2 + 2 4

Or...

eqelem f- divelem d- padelem d- g-

Which is probably a bit hard to follow, if you don't know Timlan numbers (see http://tim32.org/blog/post.php?id=56).

And to compliment this...

A new Marker!!

/#Expression#/

The # is pronounced as the Timlan 'm', for maths, or something else that starts with 'm', doesn't not matter.

Inside these Lush expression markers, symbols can be used inplace of lengthy verbs with postfixes (but verbs can be used also, and must be used properly). Here are the symbols we allow:

add +
sub -
mul *
div /
mod %

Expression markers also allow decimal numbers (0 to 9), which means that this is valid:

= 3 / 2 + 2 4

If it seems familiar, it should be (its the example above all this).

Note that the clear spacing is ESSENTIAL (especialy between numbers when they are written).

Do not say decimal numbers; this is all a bit hap-hazard ATM, so some kind of meaningful information regarding this may be released at some point in the future.

Following on...

Variables

Variables must be preceeded by $ (pronouned as the 'u' in 'put').

This applies to text inside and out of expression markers.

Nor much more to say about these...

Some Samples

tokosoluteaht /# = ^ 2 x -1 #/ sui
iqelem wuhilot padelem c- l-
evaleht divelem b- c- ei

tokouhaht setuh sui

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Fontibet

Posted On Friday 6 January 2012 by Murray Colpman (Muzer)

Timlan alphabet!

We decided we needed an alphabet for (for instance) spelling out (non-Timlan) words, having single-letter variable names, etc.

So, we made one!

To this end, we have introduced another vowel. It is represented by '. The IPA is ɜ and it is pronounced like the "i" in British English "bird" (I'll add it to fonti.txt shortly). A few dialects of British English and most of American English that are "rhotic" (ie, actually pronounce the "r" in "car", "bird", etc.) must remember not to pronounce the "r" - if you're moving your tongue whilst saying it, or your tongue is in (nearly) the same position it would be to say "r", you're doing it wrong.

As for the order, as usual, we've been logical! Number letters come first, followed by the remaining consonants, then followed by the affricates (consonants with ~), then the normal vowels and finally the special vowels - / and '.

So, the full alphabet is written thus:

b' c' d' f' g' h' j' k' l' m' n' p' r' s' t' v' w' x' y' z' t~s' d~z' t~c' d~j' a e i o q u - / '

Note that when writing out letters, you don't write the ' unless you want to specifically emphasise that the letters should be pronounced individually - just like in English, you write "B" but you pronounce it "bee".

This will come in handy when we finalise the mathematics implementation...

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Lush Goodness of the Future

Posted On Thursday 5 January 2012 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

Here are some of the highlights of inprogress and upcoming Timlan projects:

- More Vocab o'Clock (including a planed mathsy one)
- The Timlan Webpages will be finalised/created/reverted for the sake of consitance and existance.
- The Verb Project, where we will be adding syntax definations to ALL Timlan Verb-oids (Conjunctives, Prepositions, etc.)
- The Clarity Clarification Project, which will involve added concise definitions for all Timlan words (will take place along side the Verb works, and a whole load of Dictionary capability improvments)

Because these last two projects will be fairly-long term, some currently functional Timlan orientated software may fail. If you find that something stops working, please inform us of this matter via comments, as there is the chance we won't notice and it will go unfixed for longer than it should.

We will probably make some sort of Project Page (other than the Tim32 one) so that you can see how far we are getting with changes, and see detailed descriptions of what is actually going on.

Enjoy!

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Markers

Posted On Thursday 5 January 2012 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

Not sure why they are called markers, but hay.

Markers (/**/, /!!/, /""/) now have official definitions and pronunciations! Isn't that marvellous.

/*comment*/
/!proper noun!/
/"quote"/

The forward slash ('/') in each case is pronounced as the 'i' in 'in'.

The * is pronounced as the Timlan 'c'
The ! is pronounced as the Timlan 'p'
The " is pronounced as the Timlan 'k'

For example, saying /!France!/, one says '/p France p/' (where '/' is the i vowel thingy). The reasoning and logic behind this should be evident.

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BURN (and other verbs)

Posted On Thursday 5 January 2012 by Murray Colpman (Muzer)

TRANSITIVE. All verbs that make sense to be transitive are transitive (and only transitive). Basically, if something can be used transitively in any other language and make sense, it is transitive (and only transitive) in Timlan. This isn't a concrete definition; we might decide to modify the dictionary to clarify on a word-by-word basis.

So:

*kadameht setuh ei

...to mean ("I burn") is INCORRECT. It really means "I burn an undefined object". Instead, to mean "I burn", you would write:


kadameht ei setuh

("Undefined subject burns me")

You can also, therefore, do sentences like:

kadameht sui ei

("I burn you").

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Vocab['o'].Clock

Posted On Thursday 15 December 2011 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

COMPUTERS

Yes, Vocab-o-Clock has DIED,and returned, but more fun!

Here is why:
- There is no longer a specific time on which the post will be made (and it doesn't have to be daily, how dramatic is that?)
- There are an arbitrary number of words defined

On with the vocab (not all nouns this time!)

Monitor - siati
Key - kej
Physical Array - dasik
Array [programming] - dasin
Keyboard [physical array of keys] - kejasik
Compute - komput [VERRRRRRRRRRRRRRB]
Null - nul
Compile - asim [ VERB}
ConCatEnate - miaw (V.b.*/
Processing unit - roce
CPU - rocec
GPU - roceg
FPU - rocef
PPU - rocep (phyics)
KPU - rocek (kookie processing unit; oven)
DSP - roced (digital signal processor)
Web (of worldwide) - lir
Internet - lira
Mouse - kilik


MNOUSE!!

POST!

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Timlan Signing

Posted On Thursday 15 December 2011 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

Yes!

We are now signing copies of our NEW BOOK!

Timlan for Toons

Its just £29.99 or €3 in the continent! (Sorry, we can't ship to the US or Australia)

Anyway...

Signing Timlan numbers just became possible!

Just prepend w- to the number:

c- = 1
w-c- = -1
v-v- = 255
w-v-v- = -255

We also decided that z- will be the decimal point (well, hexadecimal point really)

c-z-c- = 1.0625 (17/16)
v-v-z-l- = 255.5
w-v-v-z-l- = -255.5

Post Script: tHAT STATUS OF BOOK SELLINESS = FALSE (cApS FaIl)

Anything we write will of course be online, for future refrencness (;))

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Brown Brownady Brown Brown!

Posted On Thursday 15 December 2011 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

How does one say BROWN in Timlan!?!?1

Step Zero:
- Find RGB Value for BROWN of your Choice, here are a selection: (102, 51, 0), (61, 31, 0), (86, 57, 29)

Step One:
- Convert the RGB Dec values to Hex Representations: #663300, #3D1F00, #56391D

Step Two:
- Note that 'nri' is the word for 'Colour' in Timlan - that is important, so don't forget!

Step Three:
- Turn Hex Colours into Timlan! (This is the easy bit): j-j-f-f-b-b-, f-s-c-v-b-b-, h-j-f-m-c-s-

Step Four:
- Colours are ordinal! Duh!: j-j-f-f-b-b-ota nri, f-s-c-v-b-b-ota nri, h-j-f-m-c-s-ota nri

Step Five:
- Post a comment: IS THIS A GOOD IDEA?!?1?

Enjoy!

Afterthought....

IF you want a shade of Red/Green/Blue... we just HAPPEN to have words for these!

So...

Find the byte index of your lovelyful shade (64) and make that Timlan number (64 == #40 == g-b-). Then... IT'S AN ORDINAL BLUE!

THIS IS SO COOL
THIS ACTUALLY WORKS!

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PREPOSITIONS AND THEIR VERBINESS

Posted On Sunday 4 December 2011 by Murray Colpman (Muzer)

We've sort of decided to make prepositions as verby as possible, albeit still keeping their identity in the form of the peve prefix. However, this is not 100% agreed yet, so take with a pinch of salt; it may quickly change.


So, gone is the differentiation between usage in clause-applying and noun-applying forms:

= "In France, I'm eating pasta"

But then, you may ask, what does changing the tense mean? Well, this:

...would mean something like "In a place that was France, I'm eating pasta"

Adding of tenses solves the problem that, if:

...means "I eat in an effective and complex manner", then how do you say "I eat in a manner that WAS effective and complex"? The answer is simply now changing the tense on the preposition:

This increased verb-like-ness also means that relative clause markers are used when appropriate. There are two main categories of its use:

* In the form when a preposition applies to a noun. With no exceptions.
* In the form when a preposition applies to a clause, when the clause is effectively acting as a relative clause that happens to have a preposition.

An example of the first is easy to come up with, and to see the merit: Not only can you say "I'm eating pasta which is in France" as before:

...but you can also say "I'm eating France, in which there is pasta" simply by changing one character:

An example of the second is as follows:

(note the double use of the relative there, to bring the human (rek) two layers out): "I am eating the person who burnt me, and the burning occurred in the place that is France"

0 Comments

ARTICLES! Or lack thereof!

Posted On Tuesday 29 November 2011 by Murray Colpman (Muzer)

The latter is the case!

This (selux) is used when referring to a specific instance of a noun. Lack thereof indicates things in general.

When referring to objects in general (eg "I like cats"), plurals are NOT used.

Plurals are only used when saying (for instance) "[some] cats are running":

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Double Vowels and Glotal Stops

Posted On Tuesday 22 November 2011 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

You may, or may not, be familiar with the ^ glotal stop in Timlan... IT IS NO MORE.

As of now, we will be ridding the dictionary (which we will be adding outstanding Vocab-o-Clock words to at some point) of the carets, as they are taken out of the phonology, in that sense. Glotal stops will instead be an 'invisible' phone, used to separate  double vowels (eg. 'heek', 'kecaaht').

While written, double voewls will be just that, two of the same vowel next to each other, but when spoken, a glotal stop should be slung between them, making them distinct.

So, heek will no longer be a hesitant 'hek' (double vowels used to just be held longer, which has obvious issues) but he^ek, with the caret being used unofficially (don't use the caret ever again) to mark the Glotal Stop.

I hope that was clear, the DB should be purged of ^ soon, and one of us will post the changes made.

1 Comments

Veg-a-Clock

Posted On Wednesday 26 October 2011 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

Sorry about the lack of posts the last two days, but now, it is time for Vegetables

Carrot - karoten
Potato - pataten
Parsnip - pasisnen
Pea - peaten
Bean - binen

Again... all nouns...

...and I'll try and re-write the Mega Input soon, such that it works...

0 Comments

Vocarrb!-o-Clock

Posted On Sunday 23 October 2011 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

Todays topic is Pirates, and sailing in general.

Sailor = peviaset
Navy = pevilud
Pirate = pirate
Sail = kavas
(the white blowy in the wind things)
Map = rutel
Dock = pevioy
Sea/Ocean = sufeloy
(Ship = cipevi)

All nouns as ever

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Vocal-no-Clock

Posted On Saturday 22 October 2011 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

Today's slightly late post is on Stationary

Pen - inekepi
Pencil - kapi
Eraser - nakapi
Ink - ineke
Paper - papie

All nouns, as ever...

And some time soon I'll find the time to actaully add some of these words to the DB...

The Mega Input doesn't work, and the code is really not very nice, and I am NOT adding each word one by one

0 Comments

Vocab-o-Cloth

Posted On Friday 21 October 2011 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

Today's topic is Clothing

Shirt - celofel
Tie - kavatie
Hat - hedik
Trousers - tawes
Sock - sok
Jumper - wamefel
Vest - tinofel
Coat - kuta

0 Comments

Voclock-o-Cab?

Posted On Thursday 20 October 2011 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

Vocab-o-Clock again, and this time, the topic is Transport!

transport - tanevek
vehicle - tavin
train - tarin
aeroplane - ahevin
helicopter - helivin
ship - cipevin
submarine - subevin
car - kavin
taxi - kabevin
bus - buvin
lorry - lqvin
bicycle - biwivin
chariot - qsevin
hovercraft - supevin

All nouns... again... (avoiding verbs as we may need to modify DB and ALL verb definitions some time in the future...)

0 Comments

Vocab-o-Clock

Posted On Wednesday 19 October 2011 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

WE HAVE FAILED!!!

Which means... WE MUST ADD EXTRA WORDS today to make up for it.

JOBS

Job - dulet
Scientist - peragaset
Doctor - mediaset
Engineer - bobaset
Factory - makoy
Factory Worker - makoyaset
Shop - rital
Retailer - ritalaset
School - lenre
Teacher - lenreaset
Fireman - hefijaset
Police Officer - efqsaset
Soldier - defenaset
Business - magel
Business Person - magelaset
Chef - mainaset

All nouns... will be added to the DB shortley

1 Comments

IT'S VOCAB-O-CLOCK

Posted On Monday 17 October 2011 by Murray Colpman (Muzer)

New feature. Post vocab at 22:22 each day.



Today's topic is: Holidays

*** BEACH - ORAN ***
*** HOTEL - PACE ***
*** PLANET - SEVIRED ***
*** MUSEUM - YESER ***
*** HOLIDAY - RAHAW ***


All nouns.


Will be added to DB shortly.

1 Comments

Timlan: tenses, aspects, moods.

Posted On Monday 17 October 2011 by Murray Colpman (Muzer)

We've decided to change a few pretty major things:


* We have added aspects and moods. In Timlan they are sort of the same thing, but are visually differentiated by the prefixes being in a different form (they are both prefixes). An aspect and a mood can be applied to one verb by stacking them in any order.
* Questions and imperativeness are the "moods". coko remains the question "mood", and toko becomes the imperative mood (this replaces elet, the imperative 'tense'). It should be obvious when to use these (if not, look at past documentation).
* We have one aspect so far - the perfect. This is defined rigidly as the following:
the verb has happened prior to the time that the tense refers to, has changed a state, and that state remains changed at the time the tense refers to

It CANNOT be used for ANY other purpose.

For example:

Ripley is covered in blood.

(Luther referance (as is the verb ripeli (epic)))

We are considering the best way to define and add a progressive aspect, if required. Currently all tenses still exist apart from imperative, but if a progressive aspect is created, it will replace the generic tense (elem).

1 Comments

New Number System

Posted On Monday 3 October 2011 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

I say NEW, we didn't really have one before...

BUT, in a moment on simplicity, we have devised a nice number system. It works like this:

Each digit (0-F (Hexadecimal)) is allocated a consonant or fricative (B through V), and numbers are spoken per-digit as this phone with the 'a' from 'father' vowel following it.

You represent this vowel in written Timlan as '-'. When you see '-', you must think of it as a vowel, rather than a marker or anything.

The digit/phones are as follows:

This means that the number 125 (7D in hex) is: k-s-, pronounced something like "karsar" (Southern non-rhotic British English)

As mentioned above, the written notation k-s- is used, making the relevant phone clear, and indicating it is a number directly. Any place a dash is, the 'a' sound will be. It follows the final digit (ie. s-c-d-eta)

That is about all there is...

Changes to the BD and VOS Parsers... I have to update the parser a bit to actually support numbers. The digits in the DB will be removed, and possibly replaced by a phonetics system, based on the new phones (so that numbers can be stated extra clearly (ie. saying phone numbers down a bad line)).

Enjoy!

0 Comments

NEW CONCEPT - multiple objects

Posted On Wednesday 28 September 2011 by Murray Colpman (Muzer)

We have finally come up with a solution for words with multiple objects. These include English words such as "give" (I give you the cat), "grant" (I grant you a wish), "introduce" (I introduce the cat to you), and "tell" (I tell you the requirements). There are even ones with three objects, such as "trade" (I trade my cat and your pasta with you).


In Timlan, the concept we've come up with is that you can have a "stack" of objects. As with any good processor architecture, it's the least significant object you see first

To push an object onto the stack, you use the "puc" semi-verboid*. This semi-verboid is special in that it takes no prefixes, and that the subject must be another clause (possibly another puc clause).

For purposes of backwards-compatibility, and because we see no reason to change it, in any instance in which using "to" as a preposition would make equal sense to using two objects, either form can be used.

Now, for some examples!

As with all languages I know of, the order of importance is essentially decided by how much the objects are directly affected - the object that is most directly affected by the verb (in this case the pasta, because it is physically being given to the person, who is not having an action applied to him) becomes the main object, and the person becomes the secondary object.

I trade my apple and her orange with her: (we don't yet have a word for "trade")

We will soon start to redo the database, describing accurately how many objects each verb takes and what exactly each one means.

(Please note that this is a serious job, and we are all VERY busy, so don't expect much progress on this front any time soon)

*we've also come up with some new terminology.
verboid = any word that can be used as a verb
nounoid = any word that can be used as a noun
semi-verboid = any word that can be used in some situations as a verb
semi-nounoid = any word that can be used in some situations as a noun

0 Comments

Minor change to use of prepositions

Posted On Wednesday 28 September 2011 by Murray Colpman (Muzer)

We have decided that to ease the differentiation between prepositions and verbs, they should always have the preposition prefix peve-. This is in addition to existing rules, not instead of, so you still use tense suffixes in the short form and no tense suffixes in the long form.

0 Comments

Swale Decay and Swolds

Posted On Wednesday 21 September 2011 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

Swale Decay is concept that tries to explain the inability for us to store values of Swale.

How or why it happens is unknown, but the RSL (Relative Swale Latency) mechanism proposed by some Swologists has helped in demonstrating (and utilising) Swale in everyday life.

I shaln't delve into Swale Latency measurement now, as I don't understand it.

Essential, RSL predicts that there are a fixed number of Swolds, which represnet frames in which Swale exists as a value. In any swoment, the value in the swold we observe changes. Generally, when someone refers to Swale, Swaal, or Swalie, they mean the value as it is in our Swold, primarily due to the confusion casued by this radical new theory.

The best way to simply indicate the concept of swale as a graph is with a Simple Swale diagram, which displays values of Swale based on the Swintige Principle. Such a diagram is shown below.


Swale is a single value, so you will be wondering how on eather we can plot it on a 2 dimension grid. This is because the Swale Index (like a number line) doesn't increment like you might expect.



The concept of a swumberline is the based on the decay latency of each value of swale, which is we do not know. Random number generators help us to map swale in a seemingly evenly spread map (where the relative angle is the 'real' number, and distance from swepsilon the 'actual' value of swale.

Our swaths indicates that 'proper' value swale cannot be negative, but Naish's 'Negative Time Interval' observations (a large part of the evidence for there being more than one Swold) indicate the actual (and decay) values can be negative.

Because our current understanding of swale is so limited, representing it as above is the best way for us visualise some of its properties (for example, that the number of swales in a region is not proportaionl to the 'proper' size of a region (see the Lee 'Improper Swale' swonstand, which implies Swale is hyper-dimensional, and may be representable as a fractal)) in swatheswatics.

One radical concept in RSL is that the complexity of Swale is proportional (somehow) to its latency.

So far, I've only talked about how we can appreciate swale, as a value, and not really discussed swolds. There isn't that much to say about swolds, as they are a very un-polished concept.

You can think of a swold as a contigous, independant location is space. For the sake of example, lets assume there are just 2 swolds.

Every swoment, both values of swale in the swolds must be updated, one at a time.

Looking at the Simple Swale Decay graph, the slightly pink value represents a fairly average but negative decay time (as far as we can observe). The latency of a swale is its decay time, divided by one swoment. The sum of each swolds' swales' latencys should therefore be one swoment. Because our swold's swale's latency for this particular value, we can therefore assertain that the other swold's swale's latency was greater than one swoment, implying time can be overlapped.

This is WRONG. Time CANNOT be overlaped, and there can never be more than one value of swale (in any swold) at a time. There can, however, be no values of swale at any time (ie. when one value has decayed and another is yet to be generated). We can't prove this empirically, as its impossible to sample  swale it in less than one swoment.

The implication of this is that there IS a limit to the latency of a value of swale, as if the decay time were too long, then values of swale would be held over more than one swoment (which we belive to be impossible (law 0)). The implications of this are unknown, as swepsilon seems to changing very randomly (could Swale be driven by an even more important super-unconstant, that is decaying?).

Hopefully this intro into the representation of Swale based on Swale Decay hasn't been too baffeling.

0 Comments

Swale, Swaal, and Swalie

Posted On Wednesday 21 September 2011 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

Swaal

In swatheswatics, Swaal is a construct of swale, such that

At any given swoment (the time it takes for the value of Swale to update)

It has a more predicatble value than Swale, and appears to experiance a repetition every 4 ^ pi swoments.

Note that swepsilon is the smallest observed value of Swale, and so changes alot.

Swalie

Swalie is a largley misunderstood swonstant, which is equal to sln Swale (sln is the natural swale logarythm)

From this you might expect that Swalie always equals 1, but as it is impossible to observe a single value of Swale twice, Swalie cannot take the value 1, as it would be comparing Swale to itself.

0 Comments

An Introduction to Swale

Posted On Wednesday 21 September 2011 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

This particular Blog is dedicated to the ongoing progress in the understanding of Swale (in Swatheswatics).

In swaths, Swale takes the symbol of the upside down Nee



We will use the common abbriviation to 'Swl', however, as it is easier to put in contigous text.

The 3 Laws of Swale

Law Zero - The Pure Law

This is because by the time Swale has been written to the stack, it has changed, twice (citation needed)

It has an infite number of possible values, and never repeats them.

Law Two - The Validity Rule

You can justify any non-swalish equation by multiply by Swale. The practise of Swaling an equation is not recommended in 'proper' maths, but typically removes any meaning for the result.

Law iSwl ^ pi - The Application Law

Swale takes a more predicatble value on Tuesdays, such that:

This means complex functions can easily be resolved with Swale

This is why the Higgs Boson can only be looked for on Fridays, as this is 2Swl^-1 days after Sunday

Law ++ - The Objective Law

Though not one of the true laws of Swale, we consider this an important point to recognise.

The popular operation x++; where x == Swl will result in new value of Swale being allocated, and then incremented.

This is, essentailly, a derivative of the Pure Law, but is breakable with the use of Swale Stacks (expect a post about this soonish).

Afternote

We will endevour to keep you up to date on our findings and experiments in the world of the Swale. But for now, a quick teaser

Find x

0 Comments

All sorted

Posted On Saturday 13 August 2011 by Murray Colpman (Muzer)

All issues involving Freddie's change of router should now be sorted. If you find a problem, let us know via comments.

0 Comments

Downtime

Posted On Saturday 6 August 2011 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

Hello All,

The recent downtime (from about 18:00 UK GMT till 00:00) was due to the changing of the Tim32 router. This requried a cople of reboots, and a fair bit of filling out data as well as alot of general waiting.

Unfortunatly, this new router doesn't seem to support Dynamic DNS, don't ask us why. This means that the domain 'tim32.dnsdns.org' no longer works, and we have to manually adjust 'tim32.org', which takes time to sort itself out.

Since at this time tim32.org hasn't yet been updated (I'm assuming no one needs the service now), I can't say whether or not subdomains will be working in the near future... I'd assume they won't without further adjustments, but we shall see.

Enjoy.

0 Comments

Timlan Demo

Posted On Friday 22 July 2011 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

Here are some demo's I wrote, for no real reason

0 Comments

Site Change

Posted On Saturday 11 June 2011 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

In order to step back a few version numbers, Timlan is now in verson 0.9! Hurray!

This is part of the move to the new site location, and site redecoration, to make it seem less grim, and more inviting, as well as being more useful, hopefully.

The new site link

0 Comments

Ordinals, and some clarifications to relative clauses

Posted On Thursday 9 June 2011 by Murray Colpman (Muzer)

Right, first of all, we needed ordinals (first, second, third, etc.). These are made in exactly the same way as cardinals (normal numbers), but with -ota instead of -eta:

= it is the first cat.


If you want to say "the cat is first", you remove the suffix:

And now, the clarification to relative clauses.

The general rule is that relative clauses add information or clarification, rather than changing the whole meaning. Therefore, an adjective/ordinal applied to the subject of a relative clause applies only to the subject, not to the relative clause as a whole. For example:

= The first cat, who happens to be blue, is eating pasta. NOT "The first blue-coloured cat is eating pasta".

If you want to say the latter, you must use the long form:

= "The first blue-coloured cat is eating pasta"

FWIW, you can also use the long form to produce the other meaning:

= "The first cat, who happens to be blue, is eating pasta."

0 Comments

A clarification and a minor change and a major change

Posted On Wednesday 8 June 2011 by Murray Colpman (Muzer)

A clarification about modals: The one way in which they do not act like adverbs is that they can only be applied to things that act as verbs - so, verbs, prepositions and conjuctions.

And a minor change - because of this distinction, we've decided to make modals use a different postfix to adverbs to more easily distinguish them. So, the new modal postfix is -amo, rather than -ah.



And a major change - they can no longer be used as nouns, eg in an "as" clause, so this is no longer valid:

Instead you must say:

This is because "-ah" for a verb is just the short form of an "as" construct, and "-ah" for a noun or another "-ah" word is just the short for of an "iq" construct. "-amo" isn't short for any construct, we've decided, and wouldn't make much sense to lump it with adverbs.

0 Comments

Modal verbs and adverbs

Posted On Wednesday 8 June 2011 by Murray Colpman (Muzer)

We've been thinking about modal verbs, and also about how to use multiple adverbs, and we've come up with a solution we all like:

First of all, I'll talk about a new construct for adverbs. As everyone knows, the standard "short form" construct is:

= I eat effectively

As you saw from the previous post, these always apply to the term immediately to the right, so:

= "I eat in a way which is complexly effective."

If you want to say "I eat in a way which is effective and complex", you can now use the "long form" construct, which is:

= "I eat in a complex and effective way" - we translate it as "I eat as complex and effective".



So, this brings us onto modals. These work EXACTLY like adverbs:

= "I must eat"

This means you can stack them like adverbs:

= "I must be able to eat" ("I must can eat")

And you can use the new long form like adverbs:

= "I can and must eat".

Now here's where it gets complicated, but still makes sense - using them WITH adverbs.

If you want to say "I quickly must eat" - that is, I must eat in a short time from now, but it doesn't matter how I eat - you can say:

If you want to say "I must quickly eat" - in other words, "I must eat in a quick way, but it doesn't matter when I eat" - you can say:

And if you want to say "I quickly must quickly eat" - in other words, "I must eat in a quick way in a short time from now" - you can say:

I hope it's all clear!

0 Comments

GERUNDS

Posted On Wednesday 8 June 2011 by Murray Colpman (Muzer)

We've just come up with an immensely easy way of doing gerunds - that is, using a verb as a noun to mean "the act of doing that verb". Basically, you just use the verb as if it were a noun, ie without a tense:

= "Walking is fun"

= "I like running"


Much more sensible than English!

0 Comments

Descriptive words

Posted On Wednesday 8 June 2011 by Murray Colpman (Muzer)

Just to clarify - describing words only apply to the word immediately following them:

= "I like the awesome-blue cat" - you're saying that the BLUE is awesome, not necessarily the cat.

If you wanted to say "I like the awesome, blue cat", you would have to say:

= "I like the cat that is blue and awesome".

I don't particularly like it, but it's the only way we could think of without producing unnecessary limitations. For example, with this method, you can say:

= "I like the cat that is blue that is shiny and awesome"

or even:

= "I like the cat that is green, and blue that is shiny and awesome"

0 Comments

Vocatives

Posted On Wednesday 8 June 2011 by Murray Colpman (Muzer)

We decided we needed vocatives in Timlan, last night, and after a heated debate, we decided we will have two vocative markers. Like most other things in Timlan, these act as verbs.

voc

This roughly translates as "hailing" - it is used at the beginning of a conversation, or rarely, during one, when you need to attract somebody's attention:

"Hailing FredFace: I greet you."



vok

This roughly translates as "regarding" - it is used during a conversation with multiple people, when you already have the attention of the other person, but want to directly address a comment or question to them:

"Regarding FredFace, what's the time?"




In other news, we may attempt to start translating Star Trek episodes.

0 Comments

Relative Clauses

Posted On Wednesday 8 June 2011 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

Those things which add more information that can't be considered as valuable to the bulk of the sentence.

This morning we added-relato the army of pre-fixes. Nice and easy to remember, it indicates that a verb is starting a relative block/clause. For Example:

Roughy translates as 'I am going to eat pasta that is blue and green'

When you start a new relative section of a sentence, that is like a new sentence all together - inside that the same rule applies, such as in this rather senseless example:

Meaning I will eat pasta that is  a colour, that is blue.

This may lead you to the logical conclusion that the first verb in any sentence should follow suit - as long as you know that it doesn't and don't think about it too hard you should be OK (its just a inferable and clear with and without).

The Timlan team

0 Comments

Affixiation

Posted On Tuesday 7 June 2011 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

Snigger snigger (like drowning? no? OK)

We are having a great night! Lots of good changes to Timlan!

We have changed all the nasty post and pre fixes, so that they conform to fonti (always).

The new list is as follows.

Prefixes:

• soho - replaces soh, denotes plural


• coko - replaces cook, denotes a question


• naha - replaces nah, denotes negation


• wuhi - new unknown system, denotes an unknown


• peve - indicates a preposition


• ceve - indicates a conjunction


• rela - indicates a relative clause (on the verb)

Postfixes:

• ah - indicates descriptive


• eta - replaces tea, indicates quantative


• ami - replaces mai, indicates posessive


• elem - generic tense


• elet - imperative tense


• eht - present tense


• oht - past tense


• aht - future tense

The new conjunction and prepostiion pre-fixes conserve clarity of syntax without knowledge of vocab. If a preposition happens to have a tense denoting postfix, this represents a short hand of the verbiq(to be), eg:

becomes:

The introduction of these new prefixes make the usage ofelemfor convaying prepositions and conjunctions redundant, and flawed, so don't use it unless as explained a bit above. elemnow does just indicate the generic tense.

Enjoy

The Timlan team

0 Comments

CONJUCTIONS

Posted On Tuesday 7 June 2011 by Murray Colpman (Muzer)

In a similar, but certainly not the same, topic to the previous post, I'll now talk about conjunctions. This has had much less thought go into it, but it's quite a simple topic. Just remember one thing:

ALTHOUGH THE USAGE IS VERY SIMILAR, CONJUNCTIONS ARE NOT PREPOSITIONS, THOUGH LIKE PREPOSITIONS, THEY ARE ALWAYS USED AS VERBS

Right - conjunctions are most used to connect two clauses together, or two nouns together. Although the meanings in each case are not completely identical, they are certainly very closely related, so unlike some languages (eg Na'vi), Timlan uses the same words to connect clauses as it does to connect nouns.

In fact, the syntax is pretty much the same between both:

= I am walking and I am eating.

= I am eating pasta and cheese


So, as you can see, conjuctions are ALWAYS used in the generic tense. NO EXCEPTIONS.

EDIT: I missed this:

Some languages allow you to use conjunctions to join verbs if the subjects are the same:

You will suffer and die.

This is not possible in Timlan, at least for the moment, so you must say:

...which is a bit verbose, but it's curently the only way.

0 Comments

VOS prepositions!

Posted On Tuesday 7 June 2011 by Murray Colpman (Muzer)

Freddie and I have finally sat down and worked out prepositions FOR GOOD!


BASICALLY, IF the preposition applies to the clause as a whole, and CANNOT be attributed directly to one of the nouns, it goes outside the clause, and is given the GENERIC tense:

= (((( I  give [present]  cookie [plural] )  to [generic]  Person )  in [generic]  France ) )

As you can see, this applies to indirect objects (which are created in VOS using prepositions), and general locations. This particular sentence means that a cookie is being given to the person, and the giving is taking place in France.



If the preposition only applies to one of the nouns, however, you essentially turn that noun into its own clause, and you give it a tense:

= ((( I  give [present]  cookie [plural] )  to [generic] ( Person  in [present]  France ) ) )

In this case, the PERSON is CURRENTLY in France, but the giving does not necessarily take place in France. For instance, the cookie could have been posted from Britain to the person in France.




This basically means you can go completely crazy with much more detail than is practical in English, like this:

= (((( I  give [present] ( cookie [plural]  in [past]  Germany ) )  to [generic] ( Person  in [present]  France ) )  in [generic]  Belgium ) )

In this one, the cookie was in Germany, the person is in France, and the giving is done in Belgium. This is quite hard to make sense of, since it describes a situation which wouldn't really happen in real life, but, for example, the cookie could have been bought in Germany, then moved to Belgium and posted to the person in France.

/me cheers, for completing this blog post

EDIT: That above line should have been posted to IRC, but I'll keep it because it correctly describes my attitude






EDIT2: So, we've been thinking about this, and have come to the main conclusion of this post:

* If the preposition can be applied equally well (or poorly as the case may be) to both the subject and the object, it should be nested outside the main clause and given a generic tense
* If the preposition cannot sensibly be given a tense, it should be nested outside the main clause and given a generic tense
* If neither of the above is true, it should be nested inside the clause along with the noun it applies to, in the tense that makes most sense.


I cannot think of any occasions in which the first bullet point would be true but the second wouldn't, or vice versa, and I expect linguistically wise there aren't any, so I believe we now have a very solid basis for this.


-- The Timlan team.

0 Comments

More Prepositions

Posted On Sunday 5 June 2011 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

Snigger snigger...

Prepositions are Verbs again! Exclusivly!

You don't be somewhere, (you be -) somewhere!

Stay tuned for more changes, they are sure to be the same as the ones before, for different reasons.

Note that some parsers have-ent, some don't, just wait till we make a dicision on this one!

Timlan team

0 Comments

Absence

Posted On Sunday 5 June 2011 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

In case you are for some reason keeping an eye on this blog, updates are far and few at the moment becuase the Tim32 members are caught up in Exams and such, the likes of which will be over soon.

Hopefully once we have more time, we'll be able to provide a greater presents, and do something interesting!

0 Comments

Prepositions

Posted On Monday 9 May 2011 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

After getting confused, I've decided to post this, as a reminder to me as to anyone else who happened to psychic.

When stating your location, YOU USE THE VERB 'iq'!!

For example:

If you need to state something happens somewhere, use prepositions as verbs, like before.

Proably destined to add a special post-fix for verb based Prepositions, Something similar to -ent, no doubt.

0 Comments

LFP Examiner

Posted On Friday 22 April 2011 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

Hello! After getting confused about SOMETHING (can't remember what) this morning, a friendly text led me to ammend the LFP VOS Examiner for Timlan 1.1 - hurray!

Usual place, here

0 Comments

Grammar Stuff

Posted On Saturday 16 April 2011 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

Been revising some grammar and such, here are some revisions.

!WARNING! These changes will (officially) be part of 1.1, but we suggest you learn them instead of 1.0, as they are significant. Online resources currently don't support the new '-ent' (read on) postfix.

Prepositions
Prepositions now have a proper postfix, so arn't really verbs anymore. Enjoy this example:

In English:

This means Prepositions are form of supliment.

Modal Verbs
These seem to make sense... when in doubt, try jamming sel in as a subject (make it reflexive), eg:

Putting ei in again would be weird...

Modal verbs may end up as Adverbs.

kim
Remember kim? Well, you probably won't need to soon. It would apppear that it acts as an overcomplicated work around to the main issues resolved by the resolves above. Expect a post soon declaring its removale.

I'm VERY happy about this (though, it means ripping quite a bit of code out of parser, which takes time), no doubt anyone who thought they uderstood it (I didn't) is too.

0 Comments

GIMP Single-Windowed?

Posted On Thursday 14 April 2011 by Tom Leese (TomMan)

Although GIMP 2.8 is not out yet, its Single-Window mode is available for testing!

I have been using GIMP 2.7 for some time now and I much prefer the GIMP Single-Window mode.



It is still a little bit buggy in some aspects, for example, if you open a new dockable window it does not appear within the single-window mode, but I cannot wait till GIMP 2.8 is released!

You can follow the development of GIMP here: GIMP Progress Tracking

0 Comments

For(;;) a While(true)

Posted On Saturday 26 February 2011 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

Incase someone is wondering, for(;;) and while(true) compile identically in CPP and C#. C# is my forte, so I'll demonstrate the intermediate code produced (the same) for each. Consider the following C# Code:

Clearly, it represents two loops which will be broken out of when a variable (bool threadBreaker) is set to true (this is just give something to look at).

After moving each loop to a separate function and compiling (without optimizatins) the IL for the functions is identical, and thus:

A quick skim will show up how very inefficiant this is - the need for a stored local variable alone is uncalled for, but it does show that the said variable is assigned the value true (IL_0013 onwards), but it is never compared to anything.

With oprtimizations, the code size is reduced dramatically, but oddly the maxstack is quadrupled in size. Both functions are again, identical:

Well, nothing more to say...

Enjoy

0 Comments

Battle of the Programming Languages

Posted On Saturday 26 February 2011 by Tom Leese (TomMan)

I recently put together a series of tests to find out which is faster between: Python, Lua, and PHP.

The tests consisted of:

• Filling a list of 3000000 integers


• Adding these integers together


• A combination of division and multiplication

Here are the results:

As you can see, Lua is the fastest language, python is the next and PHP is the slowest.

I did all these tests on an Intel Atom processor under Arch Linux. With all the tests I had: Chromimum, Kate and XChat running (and KDE).

Python Code · PHP Code · Lua Code

0 Comments

TMake Groups

Posted On Tuesday 25 January 2011 by Tom Leese (TomMan)

I'm pleased to announce that TMake now has a groups system on Google Groups. The url is here.

0 Comments

New RSS Feed!

Posted On Sunday 9 January 2011 by Tom Leese (TomMan)

Just a quick post to say that the Tim32 Blog now has an RSS Feed!!! You can see it here: RSS Feed

(Edit: Photos now also have RSS feeds.)

0 Comments

Comics!

Posted On Saturday 8 January 2011 by Tom Leese (TomMan)

Here at Tim32, FredFace and I have started creating some fun comics including some of the members of Tim32. You can find them here:

• FredFace's Comics


• TomMan's Comics

We hope you enjoy them!

0 Comments

Tim32 Website Update!

Posted On Saturday 8 January 2011 by Tim32 Admin (admin)

Welcome to the new updated Tim32 website! It has had a complete design re-think to make it simpler and easier to use! I am currently in the process of moving the old posts to this new blog.

0 Comments

VOS -> Timlan

Posted On Thursday 9 December 2010 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

Yes, we've finally given it a name (mainly because it turs out VOS and SVO etc. are infact proper terms).

Timlan (Tim32 + Language) shuold be pronounced as in Fonti, thus: Team-Lan

Most things will remain a 'VOS *' and what-not, its just that if we ever end up talking to anyone who does this sort of thing for a living, we don't want to end up confused and looked down apon.

Oh, just to say - all the docs are out of date... I've started re-writing Comprehensive VOS for VOS 1.0, it's in the VOS 1.0 docs dir.
Enjoy. Lots spelling/grammar errors fixed in the content also. Unclarified sections have been removed for the time being.

0 Comments

Planar

Posted On Thursday 21 October 2010 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

Yes, it does exist.

Planar is a fun platformer, where you run about and are vapourised regularly inorder to reach the next level.

Its heavily under development at the moment and the game can be downloaded here: Planar.zip

It uses some slightly hacky Line Collsion detection I wrote almost a year ago, and currently adopts Glut and OpenGL for the rendering. There is a GDI+ rendering 'option', but this sequence is no longer updated.

Planar uses Tao and FreeGlut, where before it employed the 'SimpleGLControl'. This change happened only today and so it all looks a bit haphazard (2 forms, one accepts input, one render).

If you like moding games, you might as well mod Planar, is could hardly be easier. Here are some reasons why:
- Nothing is compressed
- 'Animations' comprise of string referenced PNGs
- It has a nice set of commands (the docs for which I can't be bothered to update, just read the code if you need to find something)
- Runtime console helps debugging (levels etc.) and can result in excessive amounts of fun
- As implied, I provide the source
- I'll probably write a tutoruial for moding at some point

Have fun.

0 Comments

VOS 1.0 is here!

Posted On Sunday 10 October 2010 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

And it is more shiney than ever!

Oh, yeah - no blending of post/pre fixes and root words, it just spoils all the fun.

So you know, as long it supports ~, ^, ., and , (heh) VOS can be written on any keyboard, capitals are not requried to be distinct.

0 Comments

fonti - New VOS Phonology

Posted On Thursday 7 October 2010 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

VOS has a new Phonology!

Its not scary, don't worry, just stricter and more flexible than the old one.

Now, Blending is ILLEGAL! NO BLENDING!

Why? Because blending reduces clarity, and thus ruins everything that VOS is designed for.

Other than that, to stop people blending characters, and make words nicer to say, we are no longer allowing any non-Fricative, non-Nasal constonants to be next to each other.

We have also added new charcters which are blends, but only those which are usful and have an IPA representation. The most notable of these is 't~s'. The format is basiclly a tilda joining 2 chars which when blending make the blended noise. I this case, the 'ts' in cats, hats, bats. This is so that we can have the word 'hats' (pasta), but it will no doubt come in handy in the future.

Unfortuanalty (as we hope you will have worked out) the new rules make some words in VOS ilegal. 'seth', for example. The online DB is currently down, so some services may fail... Muzer is hard at work scripting a system to automatically verify each VOS word, and make ammends if needed.

The upcoming release of the 1.0 VWV has the ability to check the spelling of words now, identifying invalid words by their spelling.

We are hoping to have fonti fully introduced, and the online Dictionary repaired by Monday, when we will almost certainly be declaring VOS functional, and starting work on the 1.1 special vocab aditions.

If you have suggestions, PLEASE COMMENT!! YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW USEFUL IT MIGHT BE!!

As ever, the Phonolgy can be found here under the new name of 'fonti'.

We felt a new name for this shiney phonology was neccessary to make it more appealing, and seemingly more 'portable' to other langs that may which to adopt it. If you do (for some good reason, I've given you one) then feel free.

0 Comments

Concatenation

Posted On Wednesday 1 September 2010 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

Hello! Its another pointless test of the .NET Framework!

I ran a quick test just now, to see which is faster (without csc optimizations):

• string.Concat();


• string.Format();


• a + b;

I won't go into detail, and shall just give you my results.

The times in Milliseconds are:

No suprises there, as String.Format does a lot more then the other 2 methods, but this does show how much slower it is. I never use it now

0 Comments

VOS Overview

Posted On Monday 16 August 2010 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

Hello everyone,

This is a joint post by Murray and me as an overview of VOS.


For starters, we think VOS is fun. The most recent version is 0.9, which can be found here: VOS 0.9 Docs. Note that VOS is infact an acronym for Verb Object Subject - the basic word order that defines the structure of any sentence written in VOS on any level.


VOS has been shown to work. Perfectly. In every case we have considered (we've spent alot of time when we should be sleeping verifying the grammar, it seems solid (thanks to Sh4rk for intense unbias scrutiny)). English, on the other hand, makes no sense, and should be illegal (thankfully it isn't yet else we souldn't be able to spread VOS effectivly).

The ambiguity in English (and many other langauges) is terrifying, and please note the differnce between 'ambiguity' and 'abstraction' - it is a BIG and IMPORTANT differnce.

This is ambiguous:

] I'm going to the bank

Bank could be a river bank, and bank (stash) of something, or a Bank (eg. the building). If we assume this means the store of something (eg. a Box Bank) then this is NOT ambiguous:

] I put the item in the bank

It is abstract, because bank encompasses selection of similar items.


Oen of the worst crime commited by the English language is the torment of having different endings for different words which have the same effect. For example, with plurals:

Cats - Pretty much standard, OK
Sheep - Ambiguous - Not OK
Mice - Complete restructure - Not OK

In VOS, plurals are indicated in one way only, with the prefix 'soh':

sohcute
sohcip

This is the same in Hungarian, though this is merely coincidence.


The most important thing to learn about VOS is LFP (Lisp For People). We recommened reading through Expantion.txt in the VOS 0.9 docs if you are strugling to figure this out - it may seem weird at first, but it is infact perfect.

The LFP Examiner will help you check your VOS skills, and acts as a translator. LFP could technically be turned to make SVO (almost making sense English word order) work with some minor additions.


If you think that having pre-set prefixes etc. makes VOS open to error, you are right! We just verify everything using the VWV - its quick, easy, and is the only way to make the language work properly without any performance hit.


We hope you atleast consider the chance to learn VOS, or atleast the grammar structure - we've learned alot from making it, and it is really easy to learn - probably because it is so simple.


A VOS 'dictionary' can be found here: VOSLookup

This is the only place where any record of current VOS words is maintained, and any software we provide which appears to contain a long list of words is probably just downloading this.

Some things (like Boolean operators) can be found in 'Vocab.txt' in the docs - anything in there is either special, or being considered for value - chances are it will be kept, unless we comment that it may die (be removed).


There is a good chance that we will create a Language category, just for people to discuss the horror that is modern English, and the poor usage of it.


iqelet hilf sui

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VOS 0.8

Posted On Sunday 8 August 2010 by Freddie Nash (FredFace)

Hello!

VOS 0.8 is out, with a new Parser (this one actully handels LFP) and VOS Phonology.

Muzer has made the Phonology as easy for English people to learn as possible while retaining some degree of sense (English phonology is a complete mess, I'm just very confused about everything though).

The only particularly obscure characters are:

j, i, x, u, q, c

You can find it in the usual place:

Evil Lying VOS Place

Have fun!

0 Comments

What is the best way of making games in C++ in Open Source toolkits?

Posted On Thursday 5 August 2010 by Tom Leese (TomMan)

In C++ there are many ways in which you could create games. Here are your options:

• SDL


• OpenGL


• Qt


• GTK

There are probably some more that I've missed but these are the toolkits I am most familiar with.

Firstly, we have SDL. SDL is designed to be used for making games from the beginning. SDL is very fast and very lightweight. Unfortunately, it is low-level so it can be a hard to start programming with SDL. In general, SDL is an excellent toolkit for writing games.

Next, OpenGL. This is the best option for people who want awesome looking and extremely fast 2D games, or excellent 3D Games. OpenGL can't be used on it's own, it has to be used with a library for managing windows, etc. From what I know you can use OpenGL with Qt, SDL, Windows Forms, GTK, and GLUT.

Next, Qt! Now, Qt is by far my favorite toolkit of them all. It is fast, easy to use and has amazing documentation. Unfortunately though, Qt is not the best toolkit for making games. It has a lot of useless technologies behind it when you write games in it which can make the games slow compared to SDL or OpenGL.

Finallly, GTK. I have not really used GTK must, but I used to use PyGTK loads because I prefered it to PyQt. From what I can see GTK is not really a very good toolkit for making games, but it is an excellent toolkit for making applications.

In conclusion, I have decided that if I were writing a game I would choose SDL + OpenGL because it is fastest and although it requires some learning it is an excellent solution for creating games.

Further Reading

• NeHe OpenGL Tutorials


• Qt Docs

1 Comments

Qt and its Awesomeness!

Posted On Thursday 29 July 2010 by Tom Leese (TomMan)

I would just like to say a few things about Qt and its awesomeness

Ok, so everything in Qt is based around the concept of events. This means that everything from the Window Manager wanting the window to be redrawn, to a mouse button being clicked, to the window being resized is done in events.

Here is some example code of drawing a circle in the middle of the window (200x200) when the window manager wants it.

0 Comments

Tim32