Idea to fix the cubing notation

[zed zed]

So are you willing (and do you think the community as a whole is willing) to become "bilingual"?

I am not pushing it to become bilingual, if they feel that this is an improvement, they will adapt.

 

[Christopher Mowla]

I am not pushing it to become bilingual, if they feel that this is an improvement, they will adapt.

If they are to understand what the prefix denoting the notation means, you're most certainly forcing them to become bilingual. Because if they don't know what that prefix means, they're going to execute the algorithm in the current notation and accuse you of posting an incorrect algorithm. Then you have to explain what the moves are. Therefore, yes, forcing them to learn two different notations.

Can you show me an result of this enforcement, and what the sign notation is

SiGN notation is the same as the current 3x3x3 notation, but it is different on larger cube sizes. Original documentation. A video I made on a variant of it. It's a nice notation for the 6x6x6 and larger cubes, but since the majority of cubers don't share algorithms beyond that of the 5x5x5, it was more trouble than it was worth, IMO.

 

[zed zed]

If they are to understand what the prefix denoting the notation means, you're most certainly forcing them to become bilingual. Because if they don't know what that prefix means, they're going to execute the algorithm in the current notation, accuse you of posting an incorrect algorithm. They you have to explain what the moves are. Therefore, yes, forcing them to learn two different notations.

I am not forcing anyone. Use it if you feel that it's worth teaching a more consistent version. Don't use it if you are lazy.

 

[Christopher Mowla]

I am not forcing anyone. Use it if you feel that it's worth teaching a more consistent version. Don't use it if you are lazy.

Wow, what an arrogant thing to say. If they don't like your version (which opposes a version that has been around probably longer than you have been alive), they're lazy.

But I digress . . . So I was talking about what the majority of people do who use notation. They exchange algorithms. Solving tutorials conprise a rather small percentage of all "algorithm exchanges" in the community.

 

[Christopher Mowla]

As said, it is not completely inconsistent, but can be improved.

Here's an analogy which pretty much sums up this thread:

I think everyone should adapt to what I think the English language should be! For example, there are so many words that are not pronounced they way they are spelled. It can be improved. And a lot of people agree with me. (Especially those whose native tongue is not English.)

By the way, if schools don't want to bother to teach school children "how to spell words in a way that makes more logical sense", they're lazy. But they can teach what they want.

And it doesn't matter that this change in spelling can potentially compromise the integrity of many legally binding contracts/agreements (and technical documents, Engineering specifications, etc.) written in the past. They can all be rewritten if everyone eventually starts to spell things correctly!

And all of those who have already written volumes of texts, books, etc., in the old/illogical way of spelling words, well, too bad if their work is not understood by the new (not lazy) generation. If they want their books/works to be read, they need to not be lazy. They need to rewrite everything they ever wrote if they want their work to be understood!

I don't really know how it's all going to work out, but let's give it a whirl ANYWAY.

P.S.

I am the author of the largest cubing wiki page on the internet https://www.speedsolving.com/wiki/index.php/4x4x4_parity_algorithms . I have written every algorithm you see on that page in two different notations. I therefore have translated more moves (those algorithms are much longer than 3x3x3 algorithms, have many more types of moves, etc.) between two different notations than most cubers will during their entire cubing career.

I am not lazy. I have learned from actual experience that if a notation exists, it is not a good idea to change it. It can be devastating, not just "inconvenient". And I'm not over exaggerating anything if you may think that I am. There are many more algorithms which would have to be translated into your version of the notation than the quantity of algorithms on that ^^ wiki page. That's just the tip of the iceberg.

I have already paid my dues, and I don't want to have to see others have to pay just because a few people think they are better than all of those before them who had to suck it up and learn the notation! I hate to put it that way, but I cannot see your reasoning any other way.

. . . Unless you're not thinking about the implications and consequences (and consequences for those who were less fortunate than you, at that!) of what you're trying to accomplish.

 

[TipsterTrickster]

We are in too deep to change it now, but another way you can write slice moves, kinda how people usually write wide moves, and this is also how we write slice moves in the face-turning octahedron community, is add an s after a move. Basically M becomes Rs’ and S becomes Fs etc… not the most popular way to do things, and probably won’t catch on, but it’s an option.

 

[qwr]

It's too late and not big enough of an issue. If it were something truly illogical like L meaning right face and R meaning left face, then maybe it could be changed. But probably not.

 

[JaredRB9000]

I would propose H (horizontal) for E', and V (vertical) for M'. S can stay the same.

For example, R U R' U' M' U R U' r' would become R U R' U' V U R U' r', and R' E2 R2 E' R' U R E R2 E2 R would become R' H2 R2 H R' U R H' R2 H2 R.

I'd be 100% on board with this, fixes the primary issue whilst allowing both to work at once. Maybe use letters that look/sound similar to the existing ones or alphabetically adjacent but either way, this would allow it to be implemented without breaking anything which goes beyond my idea.

Maybe NCS?

 

[JaredRB9000]

Wow, what an arrogant thing to say. If they don't like your version (which opposes a version that has been around probably longer than you have been alive), they're lazy.

But I digress . . . So I was talking about what the majority of people do who use notation. They exchange algorithms. Solving tutorials conprise a rather small percentage of all "algorithm exchanges" in the community.

100% agree that any modifications need to leave the current notation untouched, since after seeing better solutions (just flat-out using different letters), it's a bit silly to propose anything with the same issue after seeing them.

 

[xyzzy]

It's immensely hard to get the community to go for any naming change (see: PR/WB, Varasano, Kibiminx) but it could theoretically be done. Even if it's successful, it'd definitely result in at least a couple years of people using both, and probably arguing about it.

The kibiminx naming in particular is something I really cannot get behind. It's not a matter of "it sounds bad/silly" or "I prefer 'kilominx'"; I think it's an abuse of the binary prefixes. I've been railing against the abuse of kilo to mean 1024 forever, and I feel like "abusing" kibi in a different way doesn't help that.

Then again, the current naming is also bad, so maybe we should all just have moved back to "flowerminx" like it originally was. (The earliest flowerminxes had straight cuts, but since that would cause physical obstruction mid-turn, a flower-shape hole in the centre was also cut out. Ergo, flowerminx. Modern ones used curved cuts instead, so the hole just looks like a star.)

I think record-versus-best is something that's at least understood within the community now. Although some of us are still stuck in our old initialisms and still use "UWR" just because we've been saying that for so long…

... but it breaks down for "S follows F".

S isn't close to F per se, but it's still closer than it is to B.

I think the problem with this mnemonic is that there are a lot of people who think it's a logical reason rather than merely a mnemonic (see e.g. ZF slow's post above), because they saw it in a J Perm video and weren't watching it with their brains turned on.

If people cannot adapt a notation, how can they adapt the more important (difficult) aspects of cubing anyway?

I think this is an issue of whether the notation is bad to the extent that it causes unnecessary cognitive load. It doesn't completely prevent learning algs from the notation, but it could make the process annoying enough that people put it off.

I can read old WCA notation and (current) WCA notation just fine. Doesn't mean I can read them as fast as SiGN.

SiGN notation is the same as the current 3x3x3 notation, but it is different on larger cube sizes. […] It's a nice notation for the 6x6x6 and larger cubes, but since the majority of cubers don't share algorithms beyond that of the 5x5x5, it was more trouble than it was worth, IMO.

SiGN has been greatly useful for big cube algs and reconstructions.

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 (!!):

Spoiler

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)

Banana G perm for scale:
R2 U R' U R' U' R U' R2 U' D R' U R D'

(*) If I'm not mistaken, even in the past, WCA notation already used w suffixes for two-layer turns on 444; the prefix-wide notation only applied to 666 and 777.

------

With all my mostly-off-topic blabbering out of the way…

The current directions for M and S are easy enough to justify if you time travel to the 1980s and think about what cubes and what methods were being used then. If you solve your first layer on the top face (not uncommon, especially if you weren't trying to go super fast), then the ways you'd insert an edge piece from the bottom layer into the top layer at the UF and UR positions were M D/D2/D' M' and S D/D2/D' S', respectively.

UF instead of UB is obvious (it's the one closer to your eyes – keep in mind that we're still talking about solving the first layer in the U layer); UR instead of UL makes sense for right-handed people.

This doesn't explain why E is the way it is, which I guess is because that direction was easier to execute with wrist turns?

Is this the actual justification? Hell if I know. You'd have better luck asking David Singmaster directly, and who knows if he'd still remember some silly arbitrary decisions he made half a lifetime ago. (edit) Wow did I get my history completely wrong. The EMS notation was introduced by Frans Schiereck as an extension to Singmaster notation, so that's the guy to ask. Looking at Cubic Circular, there's a different slice notation that Singmaster followed, where Rs = R L' (the centres don't move). See also: http://rubikscube.info/waterman/booklet.php (end edit)

I'm very much against redefining EMS for only a minor benefit in readability, especially since the current notation is unambiguous, but moving forwards, trangium's H/V proposal seems rather reasonable.

One major difference between redefining EMS versus redefining wide/slice moves in big cube notation is that the latter has never been unambiguously interpretable. Do lowercase letters mean wide moves, as they do on 333? Or do they mean slice moves, but only on big cubes? Declaring that everyone should be using SiGN by fiat is a net plus for a bunch of reasons, and actually reduces ambiguity. Redefining EMS introduces ambiguity; how would you tell if an alg is in the "new" version or the "old" version if it's not tagged with {FN} in front? There are already people too lazy to hit caps lock to type out normal algs; you expect them to bother to type in {FN}?

We are in too deep to change it now, but another way you can write slice moves, kinda how people usually write wide moves, and this is also how we write slice moves in the face-turning octahedron community, is add an s after a move. Basically M becomes Rs’ and S becomes Fs etc… not the most popular way to do things, and probably won’t catch on, but it’s an option.

or you could just use SiGN

(Twizzle currently only supports SiGN and my stupid unfinished simulator (you know, the one with the cursed animation) sort of supports both Ben's FTO notation and SiGN although there's no way to input algs. Software-wise, there's already more SiGN support than Ben notation support.)

 

[qwr]

Also, how are we supposed to meme about zoomer S move algs now?

 

[JaredRB9000]

Also, how are we supposed to meme about zoomer S move algs now?

S moves get to stay the same since they're already correct!

NCS is the future.

 

[JaredRB9000]

I'm dumb and forgot to check that NCS doesn't mess with anything; C also violates superset, maybe NAS or something. Keeps consonants and vowels to themselves to avoid confusion and doesn't violate anything I can think of, which is odd since A seems like something that'd be taken, ha.

NAS is the brighter future.

 

[qwr]

I'm dumb and forgot to check that NCS doesn't mess with anything; C also violates superset, maybe NAS or something. Keeps consonants and vowels to themselves to avoid confusion and doesn't violate anything I can think of, which is odd since A seems like something that'd be taken, ha.

NAS is the brighter future.

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)

 

[Swagrid]

What was the logic?

I'd also like to know, since it had to be a conscious decision at some point to make M follow L instead of R. It's been killing me for years now.

The slice follows the layer it is between that is closest to it in the alphabet. M is closer to L then it is to R, E closer to D than U, S closer to F than b

 

[JohnnyReggae]

I have a crazy idea ... hear me out ... what if we just left it the way it is ? Complicating something like simple notation is over thinking everything IMO. It's really not that hard to follow, and as already being alluded to a change would require a massive shift by the community as a whole including resources. I don't think it's worth the effort in the end.

 

[Swagrid]

I have to agree with JohnnyReggae here, it would be such a huge change over the community for something relatively small. Once you know how slice notation works it makes sense, so changing to RUF doesn't make a huge difference. And trying to change the letters takes away from the simple self-description of our notation. RUFLDB all describe themselves, Right, Up, Front, Left, Down, Back. M stands for middle, which makes sense as the M slice is the middle when you hold the cube. E stands for equator, which also makes sense. It runs horizontally around the cube in the middle, just as the real equator line. IIRC S stands for standing which doesn't make all that much sense. I hope I am wrong and it stands for sideways. If it does stand for standing it should be changed to sideways imo.

There, that's it. Our notation reform. S now stands for sideways.

 

[zed zed]

We are in too deep to change it now, but another way you can write slice moves, kinda how people usually write wide moves, and this is also how we write slice moves in the face-turning octahedron community, is add an s after a move. Basically M becomes Rs’ and S becomes Fs etc… not the most popular way to do things, and probably won’t catch on, but it’s an option.

We are definitely not in too deep. With new hardware and the rise of roux, slices are becoming more common every day. If the notation is to be optimized, it is to be done now.

 

[zed zed]

I have a crazy idea ... hear me out ... what if we just left it the way it is ? Complicating something like simple notation is over thinking everything IMO. It's really not that hard to follow, and as already being alluded to a change would require a massive shift by the community as a whole including resources. I don't think it's worth the effort in the end.

this is not a shift. it's an add-on. it's like talking about a new method. its is optional.

 

[zed zed]

Here's an analogy which pretty much sums up this thread:

I think everyone should adapt to what I think the English language should be! For example, there are so many words that are not pronounced they way they are spelled. It can be improved. And a lot of people agree with me. (Especially those whose native tongue is not English.)

Its more like: here is a new word i just coined, use it if you wish.