Michael Turner, On 13/12/2009 14:23:
> And sees the problem as theoretical. I think he's got a point, but my
> point is more pedagogical: The problem is people like me. New to WG,
> poring over diagrams, trying to absorb meaning, often failing. You're not
> confused, I'm sure. But mostly you're looking at your own diagrams, and
> you knew, before setting pen to paper, what the label and arrow direction
> meant. Maybe in looking at the WG nets of others, you've absorbed some
> default metalanguage conventions by osmosis over the years. Newbies don't
> have those advantages. And there don't seem to be any rules for
> disambiguation written down anywhere.
I agree it's also a pedagogical/expositional problem. Over the years I've experimented with alternative notations, such as:
subject____of
Sophy smiled
instead of
<--subject---<
Sophy smiled
and also sometimes:
isSubject____hasSubject
Sophy smiled
But the problem with those is that they still potentially imply to the students that there is some generalized rationale to which end of the relation is which. So I'm going to use:
subject_________predicate
Sophy smiled
--And.
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