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Idea to fix the cubing notation

Christopher Mowla

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Its more like: here is a new word i just coined, use it if you wish.
Using the same letter to represent something different is not what I consider a new word. You're making an existing word an antonym to itself. (M = M', E = E'.)

Very chaotic.

SiGN has been greatly useful for big cube algs and reconstructions.
I'm sure it has been. I didn't say it's pointless. Just more trouble that it was worth (for the 4x4x4 and 5x5x5).

If you were to enumerate the number of times people were confused when they saw the speedcubing form of a parity algorithm in lowercase letters versus how many people used it for reconstructions, you can't deny the possibility that it was simply more trouble than it was worth as far as confusion is concerned. Because the majority of the time (when considering the entire community), people don't to provide a link to alg.cubing.net. And as I mentioned to Lucas, even if they do, those whom they are posting the link for surprisingly sometimes still don't view the link -- they act as though a link wasn't provided/have no idea that online cubing simulators are a thing.

This thread isn't about genuine confusion. It's about complaining about why something is the way it is.

I think part of what turns people off to big cube algs is how long they look in non-SiGN notations. Literally just compare the visual width of these different ways of writing the exact same alg (!!):
r U2 x r U2 r U2 r' U2 l U2 r' U2 r U2 r' U2 r'
(SiGN)

Rw U2 x Rw U2 Rw U2 Rw' U2 Lw U2 Rw' U2 Rw U2 Rw' U2 Rw'
(WCA)

2R U2 x 2R U2 2R U2 2R' U2 2L U2 2R' U2 2R U2 2R' U2 2R'
(old WCA (*))

Rr U2 x Rr U2 Rr U2 Rr' U2 Ll U2 Rr' U2 Rr U2 Rr' U2 Rr'
(Singmaster)

I'm not proposing that SiGN notation be removed from alg.cubing.net. At best, I'm just hoping that someday, there will exist an online cube simulator which gives people the option to link to algorithms written in old WCA notation OR SIGN notation (for the 4x4x4 and 5x5x5, at least). People should be given the freedom to choose how they want to express an algorithm . . . not being forced to use the notation which is the personal preference of the web designer. After all, these are links to a simulator which shows what the moves mean.

(And speaking of which @xsac . . . in a perfect world where everyone linked their algorithms to an online cubing simulator, it would no longer matter if they thought that M = M or M = M'. They could express the algorithms with any notation variant that they wanted. But we don't live in that world. So we cannot say that M = M' at will.)

This can be of benefit to the community as a whole. Those who like to solve with a lot of inner slice turns can link to algorithms in Old WCA. Those who like to do OBTM FMC can link to SiGN. That way, everyone's link/algorithms are as compact as they possibly can be.
 
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Christopher Mowla

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This is my second double post in this thread (and I rarely ever double post!), but I just thought of something that I should have mentioned much earlier.

For those who like to write algorithms with M in the direction of R and E in the direction of U, you can do that on your own alg sheets. You can privately share those alg sheets with others who also write algorithms in that way. But when you want to share with the public (internet), run (write) a script to do some replacements. That way, if the notation is slowing you down personally, you don't have to suffer. And you don't really have to think that much when wishing to share your algorithm sheets with others.

For example, one way to handle it programmatically is to do the following replacements in this exact order. (Note that the _ represents a single white space.)
  1. Replace all M'_ with N_.
  2. Replace all M_ with M'_
  3. Replace all N_ with M_.
(And do the same for E' and E.)

A more sophisticated script will be required if you don't write spaces between moves, but this should work if you do.

Edit:
A more sophisticated script will be required if you don't write spaces between moves, but this should work if you do.

I didn't take into account one situation. When M', M, E or E' are the last moves! So you will also need to do the replacements:
  1. Replace all M'^p with N^p
  2. Replace all M^p with M'^p
  3. Replace all N^p with M^p.
Where ^p represents a hard return in Microsoft Word, for example. (^l is the soft return.) So if you use Microsoft Word, you will have to consider the end line characters.

The easiest way to handle all cases is to copy your algorithms into a .txt file and have your script first add a single white space at the end of each line. Then just do the 3 replacements mentioned before the Edit.
 
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JaredRB9000

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Again, it's adding just to complicate things. Seriously, the current notation is hardly confusing.
I don't think having NAS as an additional thing to know is exactly complex, it's conceptually no more complicated than MES and would take maybe a few seconds to explain to someone unfamiliar. Most people aren't going to use it, but I wouldn't call it complicated to learn at least how to read NAS.
This is my second double post in this thread (and I rarely ever double post!), but I just thought of something that I should have mentioned much earlier.

For those who like to write algorithms with M in the direction of R and E in the direction of U, you can do that on your own alg sheets. You can privately share those alg sheets with others who also write algorithms in that way. But when you want to share with the public (internet), run (write) a script to do some replacements. That way, if the notation is slowing you down personally, you don't have to suffer. And you don't really have to think that much when wishing to share your algorithm sheets with others.

For example, one way to handle it programmatically is to do the following replacements in this exact order. (Note that the _ represents a single white space.)
  1. Replace all M'_ with N_.
  2. Replace a M_ with M'_
  3. Replace all N_ with M_.
(And do the same for E' and E.)

A more sophisticated script will be required if you don't write spaces between moves, but this should work if you do.
If someone were to go the ME swapping route, maybe they should also have the script also add/remove the {FN} tag at the beginning of the alg(sheet) just to keep track for themselves.
I have a worse idea: instead of a nearby letter, just flip it around!
M -> W
E -> Ǝ (may not show up on your device depending on unicode support) or Э (for the Russian cubers) E is pretty rare anyway

Thus my Ua perm becomes W2 U W U2' W' U W2 (looks weird, but not any more than using N)
Ah, but then we get into my bit of loathing towards the letter W itself. Not only is it the only English letter that isn't one syllable, it's three. Why? It could've just been pronounced "dub" or something.

What if we use £ for A/E'. Having gone this far though, we may as well keep the currency theme for the new/fixed slices, and what if we make the issue even worse by not only using new symbols as antonyms for the letters they look closest to, but just flat-out re-use letters?
Say hello to ฿£$: the Dollar SiGN notation.
 

Brouxt Force

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As a Roux solver, I am very used to the way M and M' are, and it is not confusing in any way at all. Of course, in the beginning, it was weird, but it was still easy to get used to. The notation we use now is not hard to learn, and I personally would not want to learn new notation just to have two ways of expressing the exact same move to try to reduce confusion. In fact, all this would do is increase confusion, because most people who use M and E moves in their solves already know which way M and E go. And I can't remember a single time when I saw someone using an E move in a 3x3 speed solve using one of the main 3x3 methods, so having new notation for E especially is most certainly not a good idea.
 

JaredRB9000

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As a Roux solver, I am very used to the way M and M' are, and it is not confusing in any way at all. Of course, in the beginning, it was weird, but it was still easy to get used to. The notation we use now is not hard to learn, and I personally would not want to learn new notation just to have two ways of expressing the exact same move to try to reduce confusion. In fact, all this would do is increase confusion, because most people who use M and E moves in their solves already know which way M and E go. And I can't remember a single time when I saw someone using an E move in a 3x3 speed solve using one of the main 3x3 methods, so having new notation for E especially is most certainly not a good idea.
Yeah, and that should be left alone now; all I'm really looking for is to be able to use NAS on cubedb.net or alg.cubing.net and see where it goes from there.
 

Cuberstache

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And I can't remember a single time when I saw someone using an E move in a 3x3 speed solve using one of the main 3x3 methods, so having new notation for E especially is most certainly not a good idea.
Mehta has some E moves and 3-style does too obviously. As for the original post, I don't think it's a good idea to change the notation. If anything, we definitely shouldn't just reverse the direction of the existing moves. H and V seem reasonable, but ultimately I think no change should be made.
 
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