[REBOL] Re: Perl is to stupid to understand this 1 liner.
From: doncox:enterprise at: 18-Dec-2001 10:53
On 18-Dec-01, Carl Read wrote:
> Perhaps, instead of trying to make software understand documents
> written any old which way by humans, we should create strictly formal
> versions of current human languages that can be tested for
> correctness by computer? We'd then be able to have documents that
> could be examined by computer without the need to worry about an
> infinate number of special cases.
What a computer understands is a small subset of what a human
understands. How would you train people to write in this limited formal
language? It is equivalent to learning to communicate with a horse.
The best solution here is probably the "form" structure used on web
pages. This limits the response to what can be handled automatically,
and the syntax of the replies can be checked before being acted on, with
an error message back to the user who gives an invalid answer.
In other words, database entry for ordinary semi-trained users.
However, if you are doing a marketing survey, for instance, you may
still want some free text answers. These have to be either analysed by
hand or subjected to a fuzzy search for key words (wrong spelling is
common).
Regards
--
Don Cox
[doncox--enterprise--net]
