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BGonline.org Forums
Nactation questions
Posted By: Matt Ryder In Response To: Nactation questions (Timothy Chow)
Date: Sunday, 27 November 2011, at 6:52 a.m.
In my professional life, I have had a lot of experience with notational systems. Just as an experienced software engineer can smell a mile away when a particular design decision is going to result in incomprehensible spaghetti code years down the line as people struggle to be backwards compatible with a variety of random, ad hoc conventions, I could see at once that if an opening 41 played 13/9 24/23 were allowed to be nactated 41S rather than 41Z, then nactation was inevitably going to turn into spaghetti code eventually.
Tim, don't confuse nactation with a mathematical "notational system". It isn't that, nor was it designed to be. Rather, it's evolved as a descriptive language. Like a language, it's largely unbounded, contains synonyms, overlapping definitions, irregularities and even supports 'ungrammatical' formations (so-called "assumptive" nactation). Like a language, a new speaker can pick it up incrementally (unlike a mathematical notation, all the rules of which must be understood up front). Like a language, it's expected that the newcomer will make certain errors, but that more fluent speakers will probably get the gist from context. Think late (as opposed to early) Wittgenstein.
Taper_Mike's laudable efforts in formalizing some of the rules here should be seen as analogous to the efforts of a linguist labouring to codify the complexities of a language's underlying grammar.
But just as you don't need a degree in semiotics or grammar to parse an English sentence, the average nactator doesn't need to care about the 'wrinkles' in the hit/most/6 definition in order to learn the basic symbols.
The problem with all these detailed discussions is they might conspire to give the amateur the sense that nactation is terribly convoluted and difficult. Nack is a genius at making the intractable seem effortless, so I look forward to his updated nactation tutorial with the high hope that it restores some of that zen simplicity which attracted us to the system in the first place.
Nack, if you need any encouragement, know that there are many people like me out there, eagerly anticipating an updated nactation tutorial. I still have the ambition to attempt a nactation-to-trad algorithm (foolhardy though this may be!) but am waiting for that Nack-approved formal guide first.
Matt R. (delurking after a lengthy hiatus)
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