Trees trees trees...

So... if trees are to be a native or primitive type for us in Ceptr... they need to more closely paralell native Ceptr communications (like envelope / body) so they don't need to be serialized/deserialized to be placed into signals/fluxes.

We explored a couple methods (depth first & breadth first) of having a linear surface for data with a "skip table" providing relative indexing for structure and nodes within that data for navigating tree structure. Both seemed doable. Both seem not to quite be the right answer.

My gut says that in same way we do alternating definition of structure and semantics with defs and labels, that having similarly structured grouping for trees... some other dimension to the data that allows the linear surface data to be pulled into a relational shape.

TNF form

Akin to BNF grammars we made a TNF grammar to validate properly formatted semtrex trees. And again we started to get pulled down the path of thinking a BNF style notation could represent our semantic data.  

Semtrex ::= Root [ / Child]

Root ::= Literal | Or | Any | Question | Group

Child ::=  Root | Plus | Star | Sequence

Plus ::= "PLUS" / Semtrex

Star ::= "STAR" / Semtrex

Question ::= "QUESTION" / Semtrex

Sequence ::= "SEQUENCE" / Semtrex [, Semtrex]...

Or ::= "OR" / Semtrex1 , Semtrex2

Literal ::= "LITERAL(symbol)" [ / Semtrex]

Any ::= "ANY" [ / Semtrex]

Group ::= "GROUP(group_name)" / Semtrex

However, BNF notation is for constructing structures from structures, not from semantically named uses of structures. It fails to have the alternative structure/semantics that our defs do that seem to be vital to make the semantics work.

I think this is in fact how language works. Phones are structurally produced sounds by configuring mouth/tongue/vocal cords in certain positions, phonemes are semantically significant groups of phones considered to be equivalent / different from other phones. Word parts are structured sequences of sounds, that then have semantic significance based on where you place them in the sequence with other word parts. For example, think of the "in" sound which has very different meanings in "inquest" vs. "question." 

The pattern seems to continue at each level. And may be vital to semantic protocols. I want to try thinking about subatomics and electro-magnetics in these terms and see if that sheds new light on the importance of this approach.

Semtrex Development

Eric has been making good progress on building a semtrex matching engine which constructs state machines from the semtrex for matching against semantic trees.