From: Luke-Jr (luke@dashjr.org)
Date: Fri Jun 04 2010 - 12:56:48 CDT
On Friday 04 June 2010 12:43:33 pm Kenneth Whistler wrote:
> And that is why prefixes such as "0x" were invented, so as
> to disambiguate explicitly in contexts where syntax or
> explicit type do not. Ordinary language usage wouldn't ordinarily
> countenance this kind of ambiguity anyway -- it is a completely
> artificial example.
The whole point is to get the tonal/hexadecimal number system adopted for
ordinary everyday use. This kind of ambiguity is an obstacle.
> > Just two examples I can think of offhand that make a-f insufficient.
>
> ASCII a-f to express hexadecimal digits are standard in every
> significant programming language syntax, as well as for numeric
> character references that are used ubiquitously now to refer to
> characters in HTML and XML. So I'd say they are probably
> sufficient for some millions of programmers and some hundreds of
> millions of web users.
But again, I'm not talking about programming. My four year old can grasp tonal
just as well as she could decimal had I been teaching that. Now if I were
using the a-f notation, she would be (reasonably) confused as to why *some*
numbers are unique, but *other* numbers are also letters.
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