Category talk:Patterns that can be constructed with 1000 or more gliders

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Observe that this can now be renamed to 'Patterns that can be constructed with 329 gliders'. Calcyman (talk) 22:46, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Indeed, we should move the page eventually. I think we should wait at least a few days in case small optimizations further reduce the required number of gliders.
~Sokwe 06:28, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
Technical note --- category pages can't be moved, it'll have to be created anew under a new name. And yes, I agree, waiting for a little longer until the dust settles is sensible. (Also, for anyone who might be reading this and wondering, the above is in reference to this, primarily.) Apple Bottom (talk) 07:11, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
I'm finding it obscurely troublesome to mention 329 gliders in this context. The whole reverse-caber-tosser episode is pointing out the awkward fact that, from now on, there will be a distinction between "Patterns known to be constructible with X gliders" and "Patterns for which an X-glider construction can be exhibited" -- for all X >=329.
These "Patterns that can be constructed with X gliders" categories in the LifeWiki are really supposed to be in the second of these groups, but that group was invented before this crazy universal-constructor idea came along, so the wording accidentally implies that it's talking about the first group.
... On the other hand, 329 gliders is really a better cut-off than 1000 as far as creating categories is concerned. Any object that takes more than a few hundred gliders to construct will probably be the only object in its category. So really in practice I won't mind if the top glider-expense category turns into "Patterns that can be constructed with exactly 329 gliders" -- as long as there's a link to a reverse-caber-tosser article somewhere to explain why the actual glider recipes given for the patterns listed in that category are mysteriously much higher than 329. Dvgrn (talk) 21:55, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
That's sensible all around.
Looking at Category:Pattern constructible by a given number of gliders, there's no categories between "...276 gliders" and "...1000 or more gliders" anyway, so setting the cut-off to 329 wouldn't affect any articles other than the four macro-ships in the residual category (Demonoid, Gemini, Orthogonoid, parallel HBK).
We wouldn't need to edit any of the articles in question; the pattern infobox templates could be changed to default to 329 for the category if synthesis= was passed a higher number. (The infobox itself could still display the actual number passed, or it could also display 329 if the number passed exceeded that. Our call.)
I do agree that this would have to be explained well, with a prominent link (ideally rendered in large, friendly letters) to an explanatory article on reverse caber-tossers which would of course also have to be written. And said link/explanation should be both in Category:Pattern constructible by a given number of gliders and Category:Patterns that can be constructed with 329 gliders.
A separate explicit note in our documentation wouldn't be necessary if the templates defaulted to Category:Patterns that can be constructed with 329 gliders; users wouldn't see any redlinks to categories that shouldn't exist. But a note in the template documentation that this is the expected and intended behavior, again with a prominent link to an explanation of reverse caber-tossers, would be good.
Speaking of the number 329, perhaps that should be made stuck in a template somewhere deep in the bowels of the wiki as well, so as to allow easier tweaking when (not if!) this goes down in the future.
FWIW, re: the distinction between "known to be constructible with 329 gliders" and "explicitely constructible with X gliders", where X>329 --- the infobox templates could of course also be rigged to include a footnote remarking on this when X is indeed >329. Something along the lines of "†A 329-glider synthesis exists, but has not been explicitely constructed. See reverse caber-tosser for details" or so.
How's that sound? Apple Bottom (talk) 19:36, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
Yes, making the 329 defined in a single place would be useful if it ever gets reduced further (although I must say Goldtiger did an incredibly good job at this -- some of the quartets of blocks in the p256 gun are constructed by 6 gliders instead of 8, for instance, and there are a few cases where pairs of blocks are constructed by 3 gliders).
What is impressive is that 329 is so close to Gustavo's initial estimate of 386 gliders. Of course, using 2015 technology (no bumpers, no 2-engine Corderships) we wouldn't have been able to get anywhere near 386.
Does someone want to create the article for reverse caber-tosser or Formichev universal constructor? I believe the latter refers to the entire assembly, whereas the former doesn't include the shotgun and receding BLSE. Calcyman (talk) 08:35, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
I think it would still be useful to mention the explicit syntheses with >329 gliders, because those can actually be shown in RLE format and used in guns etc. Also, that should be "Fomichev" universal constructor (don't propagate Gustavo's typo into the wiki...). 77topaz (talk) 09:00, 14 June 2018 (UTC)