MSL: A New Programming Language for Text Editing and Fact Verification [pdf]

https://mimix.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/MSL-Specifications-2020.pdf

by mimixco • 6 years ago

95 25 6 years ago

mimixco2• 6 years ago

OP here. MSL is a new language for representing research and text editing as programming language expressions. Our company's goal is to replace the word processor with an improved set of tools based on this language.

The history of MSL can be traced from the goals of computer science pioneers going back to the 1940's. These additional documents further explain the development process and goals of the MSL language:

Mimix Whitepaper.[0] Explains the historical precedents for moving beyond word processing.

Getting to Xanadu.[1] Explains why Nelson's Xanadu did not achieve commercial success.

Everything Old Isn't New Again (Yet).[2] Shows previous attempts at moving beyond word processing.

Recipes for Research.[3] Explains how a new language could record text editing and fact changes over time.

Nebula: Simple and Flexible Apps with (msl) Data. [4] Shows how (msl) applications can be deployed.

I welcome your questions, ideas, and suggestions.

-- D

[0] https://mimix.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/On-Mimix-v1.3.pd...

[1] https://mimix.io/getting-to-xanadu/

[2] https://mimix.io/retro/

[3] https://mimix.io/recipes/

[4] https://mimix.io/nebula/

test9753• 6 years ago

How does this compare to a wiki[1] ?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki

sansnomme• 6 years ago

This reminds me a lot of the semantic web attempts back in the pre-2010 years. How do you plan to succeed where so many other have failed? Or will this end up as a glorified notetaking app like Notion?

austincheney2• 6 years ago

The semantic web ideas failed because the concept required open data integration. Companies don’t like freely exposing their data without branding or proprietary controls.

davidy123• 6 years ago

It didn't "fail." It didn't take off. There are plenty of tendrils of the original ideas remaining, and ultimately its main idea, that information should be relatively typed so it's more precise and reusable, is likely to prevail. The requirements were obviously too much for the web environment of the 2000s, and we're still suffering with startup culture where everyone wants to get rich with a piece of the pie, so guessificial intelligence is pretending to fill the gap, but hopefully all the problems with stopgap approaches will finally make the mainstream switch back to widely intentionally creating information.

tasogare• 6 years ago

I read the first few pages of the language spec and skimmed the whitepaper and I cannot find any compelling use case for the system. Even worst, some ideas presented are actively anti-features. For instance the inclusion of all materials that was read: in theory it looks cool, in practice this is a copyright nightmare. Again, the ability the reply every edit is creepy as hell. As an academic (whose job is thus churning papers), hiding how the sausage was made is a nice property of a PDF. Also, important thing is idea laid out in papers, not the exact stream of text that express them.

_pmf_2• 6 years ago

I cannot find any compelling use case for the system

"Fact checking" is probably the magic word du jour for getting grants and funding.

Cybiote• 6 years ago

It's worth reading Vannevar Bush on the value of associative trails: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_We_May_Think#Concept_realiz...

austincheney2• 6 years ago

Again, the ability the reply every edit is creepy as hell. As an academic (whose job is thus churning papers), hiding how the sausage was made is a nice property of a PDF.

As somebody familiar with version control and open source this is common practice.

Perhaps the chain of custody of document edits scares people who do not value transparency, but open source demands that level of transparency and criticism.

breck2• 6 years ago

I think it's very cool. I didn't inspect it with a fine tooth comb, but did a few searches through the docs and seems promising. (one silly surface level search I do is this: do the words "car" and "cdr" appear? if so I shake my head at the design choice to use a word with much less meaning to pander to academics when there is a better one. happy to see that it does not appear in MSL.)

My biggest question of course is this: is there something built with this I can play with?

By my count there's been between 493 and 1323 Lisp-ish languages over the past ~60 years (or approximately 10-20 new ones every year), but only a few end up lasting. So my dilemma is I'd prefer to wait and try a product to see if it's really great before evaluating a language.

gumby• 6 years ago

This is an exciting idea. I would hope that we can ultimately dispense with annotation and have the computer simply read the sentence and comment, or implement, or what have you.

artfulhippo• 6 years ago

Interesting work.

How is MSL related to the concept of version control/revision control? I didn't see any reference to (centralized or decentralized) VCS, but that seems highly relevant to MSL.

forgotpwd16• 6 years ago

Minix seems to be a system that incorporates word processing, AI-based (machine learning?) fact checking and bibliography management. Is MSL a language for interacting with that system or something more?

Edit: *Mimix

MiniMax422• 6 years ago

A more accurate title would be 'MSL: A Lisp-like stream-based data format for history of text based on a hierarchical key-value store'.

The idea behind the format is that analysis can be done on it to uncover useful insights about the text.

cryptonector2• 6 years ago

Sure, but that's true of XML as well. There's got to be a point to the new thing, right?

MiniMax422• 6 years ago

The MSL specification is more specific on how the knowledge-containing text should be stored. It provides the 'schema' and the semantics, based on Lisp syntax. It looks like MSL is intended to be the foundation for an API that Mimix plans on building.

mimixco2• 6 years ago

OP here, again. Thanks to everyone who read and commented! To answer a couple of questions:

Mimix doesn't force to you reveal everything included in your work ("how the sausage was made"); it's simply there if you want to. This feature is mostly for you, the author, to get to your "ah-ha" moments as Vannevar Bush called them. Right now, we don't have software that does a good job of connecting facts inside documents.

MSL is a language for building tools which we hope can eventually replace the word processor. We are at an early stage with that software which will be open sourced once it's ready.

The hybrid database on which MSL relies could be viewed as the ultimate version control system because it allows rewinding any single variable (a semantic assignment statement) to any value it had in its history.

Mimix certainly draws from the semantic web, but that's not our secret sauce. Today, Google and Stanford already have good libraries for figuring out what is a noun, what is a verb, etc. Where MSL shines is, as @MiniMax42 pointed out, in marking up that text so that it can later be analyzed or transformed in ways that are difficult with word processing documents.

While we hope to see this technology become ubiquitous, the best early use case is high-value documents like medical, scientific, legal and financial papers, as @jpalomaki said.

Thanks again! -- D

MSL: A New Programming Language for Text Editing and Fact Verification [pdf]

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