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Combinator Documentation
The purpose of this page is to help users and contributors easily see the combinators for English that currently exist in Drasil and are available for use. This will also help to keep all of the different combinators organized and to separate them by their English meanings. As brought up in issue #2399, we are trying to encapsulate the knowledge associated with common English combinators as a means to generalize Drasil's language while making readability of the code clearer. So far, we have separated these combinators into four levels:
-
Level 1:
Sentence
level. These combinators can only be used to join twoSentences
, and they do not hold any semantic meaning usable by Drasil. In other words, they are only surface level combinators and are unable to produce a sophisticated idea from two simpler ideas. When joining concepts, these should only be used when the relationship between the phrases is unable to be expressed with any higher-level combinators. -
Level 2:
NounPhrase
level. The combinators listed here are better thanSentence
-level combinators as they can hold information about pluralization and capitalization rules. As a result, Drasil can utilize these combinators in more powerful ways because it can know the rules that govern how an appliedSentence
should look. Because of the nature of theNP
type (having the ability to hold knowledge of singular, plural, capital, and title cases), these combinators can easily replace manySentence
-level combinators and give Drasil more knowledge when recording information. -
Level 3:
NamedIdea
or conceptual level. These combinators are similar to theNounPhrase
combinators, except they are able to hold the semantic meaning of the combinator. These represent a new idea that is built upon multiple simpler ideas, allowing Drasil to grow its knowledge of such ideas. The combinators at this level are ideal and practical for use in Drasil, but they are more difficult to implement. One must be able to see the underlying patterns that are within English, and then apply them using these combinators. For example, something like theofThe
combinator will allow us to contain the knowledge that the first idea is a unique attribute of the second idea. -
Level 4: Things above
NamedIdeas
that are amenable to joining. This is ideal and something to aim for, but a little too early to start incorporating consistently.
The setup for naming combinators is as follows:
- An underscore (
_
) is used when a combinator name would otherwise clash with either Haskell's syntax or any other similarly named functions. Common uses includeof_
,a_
,and_
, etc. The only exceptions to this rule are the following combinators -the_ofThe
,the_ofGive
, andthe_isExpctToHvC
, which are named so because they append the word "the" in front of the first term. - An appended
C
denotes that the first word is capitalized (forSentence
types). For example, the only difference betweenthe_ofThe
andthe_ofTheC
is that the first word will be capitalized (in this case, the first "The"). - An appended
Gen
denotes the general (or custom) case for a combinator. It often takes functions which can specify the creation of singular, plural, or title cases. For example,forGen
takes two functions and two terms, applies the two arguments to the two terms and then insets "for" between them. - An appended
T
denotes combinators that are meant for use in titles. All words are either capitalized (forSentence
types) or have some special attribute defined by the following letters in the function definition that determine the title case (forNP
andNamedIdea
types). For example,forT
will capitalize both terms and insert the word "for" between them. - Two appended
P
s orS
s often denote the formation of a plural case (commonly used forNP
andNamedIdea
types). For example, the plural case offorPS
makes the first word plural and the second word singular. - Four appended
P
s orS
s denote the formation of the singular and plural cases with the first two letters for the singular case and the last two letters for the plural case (commonly used forNP
andNamedIdea
types). For example, the singular case offorPSPP
makes the first term plural and the second term singular while the plural case becomes the plural of both terms.
Here is an example with some of the different possible pseudo-combinations using ofThe
and the phrase "angle of the pendulum"
:
Combinator | Singular Case | Plural Case | Capital Case | Title Case |
---|---|---|---|---|
ofThe |
angle of the pendulum | angle of the pendulums | Angle of the pendulum | Angle of the Pendulum |
ofThePS |
angle of the pendulum | angles of the pendulum | Angle of the pendulum | Angle of the Pendulum |
ofTheSPPP |
angle of the pendulums | angles of the pendulums | Angle of the pendulums | Angle of the Pendulums |
ofTheTPS |
angle of the pendulum | angles of the pendulum | Angles of the pendulum | Angles of the Pendulum |
*** Note that these may not make sense in actual English, this is just an example to demonstrate notation. For more information, please visit the Haddock documentation.***
Many of these combinators act like inserting words into the middle of an English sentence (unless noted otherwise). Please see the Haddock documentation for more details on each combinator. (Subject to change: prepending s
to combinator names)
Combinators with "the":
andThe
fromThe
inThe
isThe
toThe
ofThe
-
the_ofThe
(combines twoSentences
with "of the" and prepends "the" to them) -
the_ofThe'
(combines twoSentences
with "of the" and prepends capitalized "The" to them)
Common combinators (without "the"):
sOf
sOfA
sOr
sAnd
sAre
sIn
sIs
sFor
andIts
Uncommon combinators:
-
isExpctToHv
(prepends "the" before combining with "is expected to have") -
ofGiv
(prepends "the" before combining with "of a given") -
ofGiv'
(prepends capitalized "The" before combining with "of a given") sVersus
-
denotes
(inserts "denotes the") -
wrt
(inserts "with respect to") -
defnAs
(inserts "defined as")
Unusual combinators:
-
sFor'
(titleizes and combines twoNamedIdeas
into aSentence
using "for") -
sFor''
(titleizes and takes two functions to apply toNamedIdeas
before combining into aSentence
using "for") -
forTT
(titleizes and pluralizes firstNamedIdea
before combining into aSentence
using "for") -
forTT'
(titleizes and pluralizes bothNamedIdeas
before combining into aSentence
using "for")
These combinators have many variations, as pluralization and capitalization rules may vary greatly between different use cases. Please see the Haddock documentation for more details and the specifics of each combinator. (Subject to change: Naming convention appending NP to the end of the combinator name)
Generalized combinators (mostly used as helpers for other combinators but can still be used for a custom combinator):
-
insertStringNP
(inserts a givenString
into twoNPs
. Plural case pluralizes second term.) -
insertSentNP
(inserts a givenSentence
into twoNPs
. Plural case pluralizes second term.) -
prependStringNP
(prepends a givenString
to aNP
) -
prependSentNP (prepends a given
Sentenceto a
NP`)
Article combinators (the, a):
theNP
-
theNP'
(accepts a function to determine plural case) aNP
-
aNP'
(accepts a function to determine plural case)
Common combinators (appending a '
means plural case pluralizes first term. Appending ''
means plural case accepts two functions.):
ofTheNP
inTheNP
the_ofTheNP
forNP
ofNP
andNP
Unusual combinators:
-
withNP
(no'
or''
case) -
ofNP
(has a'''
case that takes two functions for singular case and two for plural case) -
andNP
(has a'''
case that takes two functions for singular case and two for plural case)
These combinators take NamedIdeas
and make a NP
from them. Because of the variety of pluralization and capitalization, there are many variants of each combinator. Please visit the Haddock documentation for more details and the specifics of each combinator. (Subject to change: Naming scheme with '
and _
)
Common combinators:
and_
and_'
andRT
for
for'
of_
of_'
of_''
of__
ofN_
ofA
ofA'
the
the'
the''
inThe'
with
ofThe'
the_ofThe''
Please see Haddock documentation for more information.
NamedIdea
and NamedChunk
combinators (does not preserve abbreviations):
compoundNC
compoundNC'
compoundNC''
compoundNC'''
compoundNCPl
compoundNCPlPh
Future changes include:
- Removing
s
,NP
naming convention and allowing qualified imports to determine the different levels of combinators. - Change method for naming different Singular and Plural operators as follows:
-
_
used for combinators that would otherwise clash with Haskell syntax - Base combinators will default plural case to
singular t1, plural t2
- append
S
andP
to specify the plural case - append
T
to specify title case - append
Gen
for general case (no specified plural case)
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