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[Feature Request] Add alternate Binary Positional Numeral system.

Open pie75 opened this issue 10 months ago • 2 comments

A long time ago, i watched a video on binary number systems, called "the best way to count", which, among many things, presented a positional numeral style for binary, that seemed interesting and intuitive. (the description of it is timestamped here)

The basic idea is pretty simple, replace 0 with a short vertical bar, and 1 with a long vertical bar. So numbers could look like this:

Western-Arabic Decimal Western-Arabic Binary Simplified Binary
0 0 .
1 1 I
2 10 I.
3 11 II
4 100 I..
5 101 I.I
6 110 II.
7 111 III

i've played with handwriting it at times, but never had a practical use for better binary legibility -- until i started playing Gauguin. I primarily play Gauguin in binary.

i'm curious to see if really practically using system would make it easier to do binary arithmetic, as my main problem is constantly reading the numbers as decimal, which makes my regular associations with them more crosswired; and while i can still do the algorithms, it's harder to make associations between numbers that i already understand (such as 101 = 10 + 11. (aka I.I = I. + II ))

The simplest solution is an option to replace the numbers 0 and 1 with . and I. Alternatively, a custom font that has just the 0 and 1 glyphs replaced with lines. Though if possible, a more bespoke solution would be nice; to join short groups of vertical bars with a horizontal bar, to make legibility easier, as described in the video.

pie75 avatar Apr 05 '24 00:04 pie75