show vs visible

[James Spencer]

On Dec 4, 2005, at 8:35 AM, Marty Billingsley wrote:

> Just asking if Transcript, which has been made English-like in the
> first instance (the setting of the property by using the verb "hide")
> can be extended to be English-like in the second instance (accessing
> the state of the property by using the adjective "hidden").

The thing that prevents any programming language from completely  
matching English (and I suspect any other language although I'm not a  
linguist so maybe this is wrong) is that English is not a precise  
language; English statements are unambiguous.  Context helps but does  
not resolve the issue.  Programming languages, at least until such  
time as someone comes up with one which is capable of divining what  
we want the computer to do w rather than what we told it to do, MUST  
be unambiguous.

The ambiguity here is that "is" generally essentially means  
"equivalence"  or "identity" but you want to use it here to mean "has  
the property of".  Thus the issue is not really the problem of "hide"  
versus "hidden", verb vs. adjective, but rather the explicit nature  
of "is".  "Field xxx" is NOT hidden, it is "Field xxx" or some other  
designation which defines the same.  I am "Jim Spencer" or "Employee  
2137" or "the man who lives at a particular address in Rochester"; I  
am not "fat" even if I am and even if that would be correct  
conversational English.

Yes, you can special case particular words like hidden but that may  
be worse: now you have to remember or look up to see if this is one  
of the verbs that sets a property that you can refer to by its  
adjective.  I personally prefer linguistic consistency even if it  
sometimes requires a statement form which would be awkward (but note:  
not incorrect) in conversational speech.

James P. Spencer
Rochester, MN

jspencer78 at mac.com

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