use-revolution Digest, Vol 7, Issue 55

[Cubist at aol.com]

In a message dated 4/9/04 9:23:30 AM, use-revolution-request at lists.runrev.com 
writes:

>
>Message: 3
>Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2004 11:26:16 +0200
>From: Norman Winn <norman at mrsystems.co.uk>
>Subject: A beginner's journey
>To: use-revolution at lists.runrev.com
>Message-ID: <F3772F30-8A07-11D8-B0DB-003065CD9A80 at mrsystems.co.uk>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
>
>
>Hello again,
>
>I have received such good response, both on and off list, from my 
>initial 'renegade from Filemaker' post that I am encouraged to continue
>
>my journey into RR even though I have not yet made much progress.
>
>If it is acceptable to the list I'd like to provide feedback of my 
>learning experience. I ask in this way as, being a reasonably 
>experienced programmer, much of my report will seem like criticism of 
>what, to many of you, will be your favourite tool.  I hope the 
>criticism is perceived as constructive. Here goes.
>
>1. I was about to ask why there was no script colorisation in a 
>previous post, when I checked out 'Preferences'. I was pleasantly 
>surprised that RR is one of those apps where there are real preferences
>
>- and saved myself embarrassment in finding colorisation was there. 
>Then notices that I could colorise a script from the menu. I presume it
>
>is simple to write a stack that applies colorisation to a set of 
>scripts?
>
>2. I asked in a post why the 'Help' windows are not show under the 
>'Window' menu. I can accept the reasons why they are not but, in this 
>case, I feel they should be treated as separate from the app in respect
>
>of 'Show', 'Hide' etc. Having said this I much prefer the RR help 
>system to the default one under OS X. Maybe clicking in a help window 
>could brilargely the result of
>
>the help, and the help system, being so good. One can end up with a lot
>
>of help windows open.
>
>3. Help again.  I am in 'Revolution Documentation' > Images & 
>Multimedia. When I get down to 'Definition of ...' I no longer get 
>explanation of items e.g. 'bit depth'.
>
>3. It being so easy to assign keyboard shortcuts to menu actions, why 
>are these not shown for common RR actions? This one doesn't appear to 
>be in preferences.
>
>4. This is perhaps nitpicking, but the statement (found in help on 
>'inverse') that, "square root is the inverse of squaring", is 
>mathematically untrue. Taking the square root of a rational can produce
>a real. Squaring a real cannot produce a rational. Better would be 
>'subtraction is the inverse of addition'.
   Yes, it is nitpicking, and I believe it's also invalid, for two reasons.
   Reason numero uno: A rational number *is* a real number -- the former is a 
subset of the latter, as distinct from them being two disjoint sets -- so, 
squaring a real (rational) number *can* produce a rational number.
   Reason numero two-o: It was my understanding that the inverse of a 
function is whatever other function yields the original number when applied to the 
result of the function. Or, given the function f(x), the function g(x) is the 
inverse of f(x) if g(f(x)) = x. Thus, since the squaring the square root of a 
number yields the original number, on what grounds would one assert that taking 
the square root is *not* the inverse of squaring?

   Since we're getting nitpicky anyway: Squaring the square root of a number 
is *not* necessarily the same as taking the square root of the square of a 
number. "Squaring the root" will always yield the original number...  but 
"rooting the square" yields the *absolute value* of the original number, which is 
only the original number if that original number was positive to begin with. 
Therefore, this would appear to be a case where f(x) is the inverse of g(x), but 
g(x) is *not* the inverse of f(x) !