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Need LV users to help change English language (and possibly other


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Pop up menu items are supposed to be little short phrases, not paragraphs. But sometimes there is no single word that means what you need it to mean. So, in order to be able to provide a reasonable name for a future menu item in LabVIEW, I need all our users to begin using a new word. If you use it in enough places, we may be able to get the dictionaries of the world to incorporate it in their next editions, thereby providing a word we can use for this menu item.

The word is "sourcenders". For any given project item under Dependencies, sourcenders are those project items under Source that, as a result of some chain of dependencies, are the reasons that the original project item is included under Dependencies. Or, to put it another way, in any given chain of dependencies, sourcenders are the last items that are under Source and the rest of the dependency chain past that point is listed under Dependencies.

Some suggested usages:

"On our IRS tax forms, I listed the children as dependencies, but I couldn't find a way to list my spouse as another sourcender."

"If you want that structure to hang from the ceiling, you probably need to add some more sourcenders to spread out the pressure."

"That problem is algorithmically equivalent to finding all the sourcenders of a given subVI."

"Our school chose the name for our new mascot. We're going to be the sourcenders!"

"All your sourcenders are belong to us."

Our goal is to get this word into common usage by the end of this year. But we can only do it with your help! Those of you who speak foreign languages can help out by coining an equivalent term. Of course, the most helpful are those languages that LV is translated into... knowing that "sourcender" in Spanish is "terminovenera" is interesting but does not help the cause.

Thank you for your assistance in this matter.

To help you visualize the situation... if all the green nodes in this picture are VIs under source and the red nodes are VIs under dependencies, and I ask for all the sourcenders of node E, then I should get B, C and F (marked with blue stars) as the result. There does not appear to be a word in English for these things.

post-5877-1224717056.png?width=400

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QUOTE (Aristos Queue @ Oct 22 2008, 04:11 PM)

Pop up menu items are supposed to be little short phrases, not paragraphs. But sometimes there is no single word that means what you need it to mean. So, in order to be able to provide a reasonable name for a future menu item in LabVIEW, I need all our users to begin using a new word. If you use it in enough places, we may be able to get the dictionaries of the world to incorporate it in their next editions, thereby providing a word we can use for this menu item.

The word is "sourcenders". For any given project item under Dependencies, sourcenders are those project items under Source that, as a result of some chain of dependencies, are the reasons that the original project item is included under Dependencies. Or, to put it another way, in any given chain of dependencies, sourcenders are the last items that are under Source and the rest of the dependency chain past that point is listed under Dependencies.

Some suggested usages:

"On our IRS tax forms, I listed the children as dependencies, but I couldn't find a way to list my spouse as another sourcender."

"If you want that structure to hang from the ceiling, you probably need to add some more sourcenders to spread out the pressure."

"That problem is algorithmically equivalent to finding all the sourcenders of a given subVI."

"Our school chose the name for our new mascot. We're going to be the sourcenders!"

"All your sourcenders are belong to us."

Our goal is to get this word into common usage by the end of this year. But we can only do it with your help! Those of you who speak foreign languages can help out by coining an equivalent term. Of course, the most helpful are those languages that LV is translated into... knowing that "sourcender" in Spanish is "terminovenera" is interesting but does not help the cause.

Thank you for your assistance in this matter.

To help you visualize the situation... if all the green nodes in this picture are VIs under source and the red nodes are VIs under dependencies, and I ask for all the sourcenders of node E, then I should get B, C and F (marked with blue stars) as the result. There does not appear to be a word in English for these things.

http://lavag.org/old_files/monthly_10_2008/post-5877-1224717056.png' target="_blank">post-5877-1224717056.png?width=400

I was going to suggest primesource, origsource or ultsource based on how I understood what I thought you were describing but, from the diagram you gave, I'm left wondering what "A" would be considered if not a sourcender?

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Should this concept should be coupled to the term "source"? This problem is generally applicable to identifying members of any set that have an external dependency (which effectively causes the entire set to have said dependency).

What if we describe these things as "externally dependent" or "having external dependencies"?

Or, along the lines of your original idea, what about calling these things "internal-enders"?

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QUOTE (Aristos Queue @ Oct 22 2008, 04:11 PM)

To help you visualize the situation... if all the green nodes in this picture are VIs under source and the red nodes are VIs under dependencies, and I ask for all the sourcenders of node E, then I should get B, C and F (marked with blue stars) as the result. There does not appear to be a word in English for these things.

I'm not sure why B, C, F are the 'sourcenders' for node E -- I would have thought from your description that 'B, C, D' are 'sourceneders' and the word I would really use to describe them is 'intermediaries'. I'm confused why you are forced to make up words. I thought you had to be POTUS to do that ;)

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What about the word "terminus"?

While checking for the word terminus on Wikipedia, I found this interesting little piece of text:

"A terminus (or terminal, in North American parlance) is a station at which, since it lies at the very end of a line of railway, all arriving trains must perforce terminate their journeys, and from which they can consequently depart only following a reversal."

I never looked up perforce until today. "by physical coercion; by force of circumstances" :P

  • "That problem is algorithmically equivalent to finding all the termini of a given subVI."
  • "Our school chose the name for our new mascot. We're going to be the Termini!"
  • "All your termini are belong to us."

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Stephen, how about "dependency callers"? I think it pretty accurately describes these, even if it's not immediately understood.

Philip, while terminus is a great word (and you just brought back some nice Asimov memories), I don't think it accurately describes these, as they are NOT end points. More often than not they are probably in the middle of the call chain and the only thing making them special is that they are at "the end" of the project.

P.S. Stephen, what's the use case for finding these?

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QUOTE (Aristos Queue @ Oct 22 2008, 07:11 PM)

QUOTE (Yair @ Oct 23 2008, 03:00 PM)

Philip, while terminus is a great word (and you just brought back some nice Asimov memories), I don't think it accurately describes these, as they are NOT end points. More often than not they are probably in the middle of the call chain and the only thing making them special is that they are at "the end" of the project.

I think that terminus applies exactly because they are end points w/r/t the project as Stephen described it. A train terminus is "the end of the line" w/r/t the context of the mode of transportation, but that does not mean that the traveler is now unable to continue; only the mode of travel changes.

It is a very generic term. I wonder if there is an existing appropriate term that can be reused from graphing theory, petri nets (transition?) etc...

I'm guessing that this new pop-up might have something to do with the VI Hierarchy or LV Project...

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i am always prone to inventing new words (worlds..), but this one "sourcenders" really sounds like a politically correct word for a bastard dependancy VI...sorry for the language :)

i am for the word: 'Little Urswick' *

original description: the member of any class whomost inclinesthe teacher toward the view that capital punishment should be introduced in schools.

It fits here, no?

*original source (apart the city...): the deeper meaning of Liff

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QUOTE (Omar Mussa @ Oct 23 2008, 02:05 AM)

Nope. D is itself a dependency, not actually part of the project source.

QUOTE (Phillip Brooks @ Oct 23 2008, 06:54 AM)

What about the word "
"

The problem with using any existing word is that people would think they knew what it meant. Suppose I popped up on node D and asked for the terminus nodes. A lot of people would think "Oh, that would be node E". E pretty clearly looks like a terminus. We've been plowing through dictionaries and no one has found anything that was sufficiently unambiguous. When I said "then we need to coin a word so that people will go look it up rather than assume a meaning that is wrong" I was told we couldn't just make up words -- they had to be real English words, preferably localizable. And thus this effort. :-)

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QUOTE (Omar Mussa @ Oct 23 2008, 02:05 AM)

I thought you had to be POTUS to do that ;)
Good heavens NO. This isn't French or German we're talking about. We have no legislature to declare which words are in and which are out. In English, writers and speakers may freely verbify, acronymize, contracti'nate, metametaphoraize (or asimileate), slangerz and prepostreundisabigurhyme0. This is the language of Carrol ("T'was brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe. All mimsy were the borogrooves and the mome raths outgrabe."), science (quarks, gravitons, bogons...), and product marketing (lite, FedEx, google, spandex...). In English, John Cage may declare silence to be music, teenagers may declare cool and hot equivalent, and we can load the word "run" with 150+ individual definitions and still somehow meaningfully talk to each other1. Eskimos may have 100 words for "snow"2, but English could have 10000 snowesque words in moments should the need arise! Other languages have boundaries. Those other languages are merely subsets of English that are not yet in common usage. That isn't just cavalier propaganda: from kindergarten to college we are taught that when English reaches nadir of its existing word cache, it has the chutzpah to pick up its tomahawk, breeze into other languages, loot their alphabets, adages, algebras, aphorisms, et cetra, roll them into a verbal tortilla, perform some magic voodoo on the spelling and, abracadabra, it is a valid English term, one that may be treated as a bit posh despite its sleazy origins.

Other languages are adopting this practice as time goes by, some are more gung-ho about it than others. English will someday be the world's language, but it won't be by displacing the others. It will be by embracing them. After all... isn't English the language of Microsoft? :ninja:

0 And curiously enough, I'll bet you can guess what I meant by each one of those words.

1 Check your dictionary -- "run" has more definitions than any other word.

2 Not actually true

3 Including "et cetera" itself

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Somehow I have the feeling this should belong to the LAVA lounge.

Stephen, do you happen to read Disc World by Terry Pratchett?

Still sourcenders is not a word I would grip in one time.

What about a feature in the project window, where you select a dependency and right-click, relations->Callers inside project?

The last time I checked the list context menu was just 40 items long, so 41 wouldn't matter.

Ton

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QUOTE (Aristos Queue @ Oct 24 2008, 01:07 AM)

English will someday be the world's language, but it won't be by displacing the others. It will be by embracing them.

Word. Other languages are doing that, but not at the rate English does. It's kinda cool to listen to a modern conversation in Chinese or Japanese and here what seems like random English words peppered through it...

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QUOTE (Ton @ Oct 24 2008, 12:56 AM)

Somehow I have the feeling this should belong to the LAVA lounge.

My thoughts exactly... Nonetheless, here's my nickel:

I’m not a linguist by any means. However, if the existence of B, C, and F are dependent upon the existence of D and E, wouldn’t the removal of D and E be contingent upon the removal of B, C, and F?

My vote would be to bend the common usage of “contingent” for use as a noun is this case. Thus, in the project item context menus:

Show Dependants = (Highlight the VIs in the dependencies list.) = Downstream Dependence

Show Contingents = (Highlight the VIs in the project source.) = Upstream Dependence

It’s not that I dislike new words, but aren’t we taught to reuse. IMHO, recasting the word “contingent” as a noun makes much more sense than trying to invent a new word.

~Dan

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QUOTE (Aristos Queue @ Oct 23 2008, 10:07 PM)

Classic post. And I'll bet it took you all 1 hr 6 minutes to write it. :)

(It was time well spent.)

QUOTE

Why not? As you pointed out, you can't hardly be n'americun without having made one up. Besides, once you make it up you can trademark it and make millions.

QUOTE (Aristos Queue @ Oct 22 2008, 04:11 PM)

The word is "sourcenders". For any given project item under Dependencies, sourcenders are those project items under Source that, as a result of some chain of dependencies, are the reasons that the original project item is included under Dependencies. Or, to put it another way, in any given chain of dependencies, sourcenders are the last items that are under Source and the rest of the dependency chain past that point is listed under Dependencies.

post-7603-1224877461.png?width=400

I'm glad you're looking into this. On more than one occasion I have accidentally pulled in an incorrect dependency and had to spend considerable time finding the guilty vi. (For instance, accidentally using source reuse code instead of distributed reuse code.)

I think, however, that you are aiming at only half the target. In the example given asking for the sourcenders of E returns B, C, and F. The problem is that I can't find E anywhere in B or F so I end up having to dig deeper to find and break the dependency. What the user needs to know is the location of the bridges between source and dependencies. In order for a bridge to be a bridge, it must have anchors at both ends. (Otherwise it is a ramp...)

In use, I could pop up on E and select "Find Bridges" which would return the anchors for each bridge. Perhaps something like...

F.vi <--> D.vi

B.vi <--> D.vi

C.vi <--> E.vi

Ideally "Find Bridges" would work on more than just a single vi. I'd love to be able to pop up on a class or lvlib and Find Bridges. Using "Find Callers" on them doesn't work so well...

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LOL! I've been away from LAVA for a little while and the discussion has... err... progressed almost beyond alpha strings... :) I wonder the feelings of those poor NI translators who try to figure out how to translate the new (English?) terms the LabVIEW R&D has come up with this time.

-Tomi

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