Talk:Normal forms: Difference between revisions

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: Finally, the irref form should be removed as it's almost never used. We cover it in another page i.e. ''generator size manipulation'', just like other forms. [[User:FloraC|FloraC]] ([[User talk:FloraC|talk]]) 15:07, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

:: My view of my new canonical form article is that it is mostly about defactoring, or in other words, the main element that is missing from the existing normal form and its wiki page. It is only partially about a canonical form for matrices which uses defactoring. I certainly agree with you that the extreme level of detail I included on my page, and in particular the documentation of failed experiments and tangential information, gives it a "development notes" character. Totally fair. :) You may have noticed that I also initiated similar discussion on the page for saturation/contorsion here: https://en.xen.wiki/w/Talk:Saturation, i.e. discussion re: how best to integrate this material about defactoring and canonical form in with what already exists on the wiki.

:: I think that at the end of the day, only two pages are necessary: one page about defactoring, and one page about the matrix form which uses defactoring along with Hermite normalization in order to achieve a unique identifier for a temperament. Due to recent freaky experiences proposing changes to the wiki on Facebook, my confidence about making major contributions directly to existing pages has been shaken. That's why I added all my new material to one new page: perhaps only as a staging ground. If I were to have felt more confident, I would have directly:

# added most of that new material to the page for saturation/contortion, added redirect pages to it for "enfactored", "defactoring", etc., and then in the Talk page drawn people's attention to the parts of the new material explaining the major flaws in the existing terminology for the concept and recommending that the primary name of the page be updated to "defactoring".

# added a small amount of material to this existing normal lists page, added a redirect page to it for "canonical form", and then in the Talk page drawn people's attention to the parts of the new material explaining the preference for "canonical" over "normal" as the term for this form and recommend that the primary name of the page be updated to "canonical form".

:: I believe that there are some people who will never accept proposals to rename concepts like "saturation" and "contorsion", nor would they appreciate the reworking and relegation of most of the existing material on that page to a "mathematical theory" subsection of it as I would prefer. So I think I'll never accomplish the consolidation of the defactoring material into the saturation/contorsion page. However, I do think we can migrate relevant information from my page into the existing normal lists page. In other words, extract all the information from my page about canonical form into the normal lists until I can rename my new page to be focused exclusively on "defactoring" independent of the canonical form it's used for, and then rename the normal lists page to "canonical form". The amount of migrated material to accomplish that may indeed literally be a one-liner, as you suggest. :)

:: You make an excellent point that while people exploring on their own are likely to encounter enfactored temperaments, probably most of those that have managed to get documented here are not enfactored. And also if you think that the IRREF form is almost never used, then there's not that risk of mismatch either. Therefore I agree that we probably ''could'' simply override the existing normal form with the new canonical form, or in other words, conflate the two while keeping the name "normal form", without causing a ton of inaccuracies across the wiki.

:: However, I don't think that's a good idea. While I personally agree that there may be little value in maintaining "normal form" as a term which refers to an RTT matrix which has been normalized but not also defactored, I think it is smarter and safer to allow for the possibility that there are people for whom the existing normal form w/o defactoring does hold some importance which we don't see ourselves at this time. Just for backwards compatibility's sake, I mean. There's also an argument that switching to the new term "canonical form" would be important because it helps signal to the community that the form has changed conceptually.

:: I agree that the IRREF form should be removed from this page. It's not mentioned in my new page for "generator size manipulation" though, so I'm not sure what you mean by that. Perhaps you mean that we should extract it to its own dedicated page? --[[User:Cmloegcmluin|Cmloegcmluin]] ([[User talk:Cmloegcmluin|talk]]) 17:42, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

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 : Finally, the irref form should be removed as it's almost never used. We cover it in another page i.e. ''generator size manipulation'', just like other forms. [[User:FloraC|FloraC]] ([[User talk:FloraC|talk]]) 15:07, 28 September 2021 (UTC)
+:: My view of my new canonical form article is that it is mostly about defactoring, or in other words, the main element that is missing from the existing normal form and its wiki page. It is only partially about a canonical form for matrices which uses defactoring. I certainly agree with you that the extreme level of detail I included on my page, and in particular the documentation of failed experiments and tangential information, gives it a "development notes" character. Totally fair. :) You may have noticed that I also initiated similar discussion on the page for saturation/contorsion here: https://en.xen.wiki/w/Talk:Saturation, i.e. discussion re: how best to integrate this material about defactoring and canonical form in with what already exists on the wiki.
+:: I think that at the end of the day, only two pages are necessary: one page about defactoring, and one page about the matrix form which uses defactoring along with Hermite normalization in order to achieve a unique identifier for a temperament. Due to recent freaky experiences proposing changes to the wiki on Facebook, my confidence about making major contributions directly to existing pages has been shaken. That's why I added all my new material to one new page: perhaps only as a staging ground. If I were to have felt more confident, I would have directly:
+# added most of that new material to the page for saturation/contortion, added redirect pages to it for "enfactored", "defactoring", etc., and then in the Talk page drawn people's attention to the parts of the new material explaining the major flaws in the existing terminology for the concept and recommending that the primary name of the page be updated to "defactoring".
+# added a small amount of material to this existing normal lists page, added a redirect page to it for "canonical form", and then in the Talk page drawn people's attention to the parts of the new material explaining the preference for "canonical" over "normal" as the term for this form and recommend that the primary name of the page be updated to "canonical form".
+:: I believe that there are some people who will never accept proposals to rename concepts like "saturation" and "contorsion", nor would they appreciate the reworking and relegation of most of the existing material on that page to a "mathematical theory" subsection of it as I would prefer. So I think I'll never accomplish the consolidation of the defactoring material into the saturation/contorsion page. However, I do think we can migrate relevant information from my page into the existing normal lists page. In other words, extract all the information from my page about canonical form into the normal lists until I can rename my new page to be focused exclusively on "defactoring" independent of the canonical form it's used for, and then rename the normal lists page to "canonical form". The amount of migrated material to accomplish that may indeed literally be a one-liner, as you suggest. :)
+:: You make an excellent point that while people exploring on their own are likely to encounter enfactored temperaments, probably most of those that have managed to get documented here are not enfactored. And also if you think that the IRREF form is almost never used, then there's not that risk of mismatch either. Therefore I agree that we probably ''could'' simply override the existing normal form with the new canonical form, or in other words, conflate the two while keeping the name "normal form", without causing a ton of inaccuracies across the wiki.
+:: However, I don't think that's a good idea. While I personally agree that there may be little value in maintaining "normal form" as a term which refers to an RTT matrix which has been normalized but not also defactored, I think it is smarter and safer to allow for the possibility that there are people for whom the existing normal form w/o defactoring does hold some importance which we don't see ourselves at this time. Just for backwards compatibility's sake, I mean. There's also an argument that switching to the new term "canonical form" would be important because it helps signal to the community that the form has changed conceptually.
+:: I agree that the IRREF form should be removed from this page. It's not mentioned in my new page for "generator size manipulation" though, so I'm not sure what you mean by that. Perhaps you mean that we should extract it to its own dedicated page? --[[User:Cmloegcmluin|Cmloegcmluin]] ([[User talk:Cmloegcmluin|talk]]) 17:42, 28 September 2021 (UTC)