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From: John Maddock (john_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-06-30 05:06:33


> OK, here is my current top-candidate:
>
> When classifying types it is often necessary to match against
> several variations of one aspect.
>
> There are special variations which make this possible. These are called
> *abstract*.
>
> The most important case is to match any variation; that is, to ignore
> that aspect in the context of type classification. Because of this,
> every
> aspect has at
> least one abstract variation named "unspecified_" plus the aspect name.

That one also makes sense to me, I'm still not sure that "abstract" is the
right word though :-)

Explanation: to me if something is "abstract" then you need to add something
to it, extend it in some way to make it concrete. What you're doing is
combining several concrete definitions to form a non-specific union of some
kind. So a quick trip to thesaurus.com suggests: "composite", "compound" or
"mixed" as possible names, do any of these work for you?

John.


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