On Mon, 12 Dec 2005, Frank Barknecht wrote:
Mathieu Bouchard hat gesagt: // Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
für German, it makes more sense to use the Reverse Polish Notation (RPN) as commonly used in Forth, PostScript, and HP calculators. e.g.: 1 2 sende-nachricht
However: German is not RPN, the word order in a sentence is very similar to the one in English
"German books are easy enough to read when you hold them before the looking-glass or stand on your head--so as to reverse the construction--but I think that to learn to read and understand a German newspaper is a thing which must always remain an impossibility to a foreigner." -- Mark Twain 1880
« There are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome. An average sentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime and impressive curiosity; it occupies a quarter of a column; it contains all the ten parts of speech--not in regular order, but mixed; it is built mainly of compound words constructed by the writer on the spot, and not to be found in any dictionary--six or seven words compacted into one, without joint or seam--that is, without hyphens; it treats of fourteen or fifteen different subjects, each enclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with here and there extra parentheses, making pens with pens: finally, all the parentheses and reparentheses are massed together between a couple of king-parentheses, one of which is placed in the first line of the majestic sentence and the other in the middle of the last line of it--AFTER WHICH COMES THE VERB, and you find out for the first time what the man has been talking about; and after the verb--merely by way of ornament, as far as I can make out--the writer shovels in "HABEN SIND GEWESEN GEHABT HAVEN GEWORDEN SEIN," or words to that effect, and the monument is finished. » -- Mark Twain 1880
and not similar to Yoda. (Maybe it's this way in, uhm, Polish?)
RPN is the reverse version of Polish Notation, which makes all operators prefix, as in LISP, but not necessarily with the same syntax. E.g. 2+2 is then written +(2,2) or +(2 2) or (+ 2 2) depending on the variant of PN.
_ _ __ ___ _____ ________ _____________ _____________________ ... | Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801 - http://artengine.ca/matju | Freelance Digital Arts Engineer, Montréal QC Canada