3 ms·
As far as I can see the section on negative numbers was completely made up, or at least it is not sourced in the system's patent. The encoding was mostly define
by masklinn 3y ago
As far as I can see the section on negative numbers was completely made up, or at least it is not sourced in the system's patent. The encoding was mostly defined as a way to transmit (and write down) binary data in nibbles (groups of 4 bits), it does not really concern itself with what that data encodes.
The one thing it does support which the wiki does not note, is a run-length encoding: if a syllable ends in R, then the segment until the next R is interpreted as a positive integer and a repetition count so HORBAR is 05 (5 repetitions of 0), and DIRHAHOR is 1516 (16 repetitions of a fully set nibble).
- masklinn 3y agoAnd of course I forgot about HN's shitty markup and didn't notice before the edition timer ran out. HORBAR is repeat(0x0, count=5) DIRHAHOR is repeat(0xF, count=16) Also in script form this is written as a strange parenthetical. Strange because the repeated nibble gets an open paren "stuck" to it, like a tail. So repeated nibbles don't look much like their base form.