docs/number_encoding.md

@@ -202,36 +202,65 @@ And so on and so forth for signed integers of unlimited size.
 
 # bitstrings
 
-Bitstrings in Merkle-patricia tree representing an sql index
-are typically very short, so should be represented by a 
-variable length quantity.  Which does not need to have the correct
-bytestring sort order.
+It might be convenient to represent the data as a pile of edges,
+rather than a pile of vertices, thus solving the problem that
+the tree must always start with an edge, not vertex.
+This duplicates the start position of every edge,
+but this duplication does not matter because the patricia representation of an index,
+and the standard and usual database representation of an index,
+compresses out the leading duplication.
 
-I have no end of clever ideas to represent them in fully compressed form,
-but all we actually need is a count of the bits of the vertex, the difference
-counts for the number of bits in the left and right edges,
-the left bytestring which contains the parent and left bitstrings, and, 
-if the right bitstring is more than one bit longer than the parent bitstring, 
-the difference bytes for the right bitstring.
+So we are representing an sql index by table whose primary key is the
+bitstring of the start position, and whose values are the
+start position and the end position.
+The patricia edges of this table live in the same table, just
+their values are distinguished from actual leaf values.
 
-If we want to be terribly clever at optimization, if both leaf bitstrings
-are only greater by one than the parent bistring, we have bytes containing
-the parent bitstring, otherwise the bytestring containing all the bits of 
-the longest edge bitstring, plus the difference bytes for the shorter
-bitstring if it is longer than its parent by more than one.
+Variable length bitstrings are represented as variable
+length bytestrings by appending a one bit followed by 
+zero to seven zero bits.
 
-An edge in a Merkle-patricia sql index contains the bit path
-of the thing pointed to, and the completely unrelated hash of the
-thing pointed to, which contains its own type information.
-But sometimes, often, we are indexing things
-*by* their hash, so need a flag on a leaf edge to denote this case.
+In the table we may compress the end values by discarding
+all leading bytes except the overlap byte.
+
+Thus the actual table, containing only the leaf values,
+is a virtual table based on a select statement that
+excludes the internal edges of the patricia tree from
+the table of all edges, and concatenates the compressed
+value with the index to form the absolute value.
+
+It is very common for the end value to be very short.
+
+We could save a byte (which is a premature optimization)
+as follows:
+
+If S is the length of the bitfield in bits:
+
+If $0\le S \lt 5$, it is represented by the variable
+length integer obtained by prepending a set bit to the bitfield.
+
+If $5\le S$ we represent the bit sequence as a byte
+sequence prepended with the byte count plus 48,
+(leaving a gap of sixteen impermissible values for future expansion)
 
 # Dewey decimal sequences.
 
-The only thing we ever want to do with Dewey decimal sequences is $<=>$,
-and they are always positive numbers less than $10^{14}$, so we represent them as
-a sequence of variable length numbers terminated by the number minus one
-and compare them as bytestrings.
+The only operation we ever want to do with Dewey
+decimal sequences is $<=>$, and they are always
+positive numbers less than $10^{34}$, so we represent
+them as a sequence of variable length positive
+numbers terminated by a byte that corresponds
+to the header of an impermissibly large number, the
+byte `0xFFFF`, and compare them as bytestrings.
+
+Albeit we could add, subtract, multiply, and divide
+Dewey decimal sequences as polynomials,
+which would require signed integer sequences,
+but I cannot see any use case for this,
+while unsigned integer sequences have the advantage
+that the ones used to sort and identify things are always
+positive in practice, and one may consider a utf
+string to be a very long Dewey decimal sequence.
 
 ### SQL blobs.
 

docs/writing_and_editing_documentation.md

@@ -126,6 +126,7 @@ $$\int \sin(x) dx = \cos(x)$$
 $$\sum a_i$$
 $$\lfloor{(x+5)÷6}\rfloor = \lceil{(x÷6}\rceil$$
 $$\lfloor{(x+5)/6}\rfloor = \lceil{(x/6}\rceil$$
+$$0\le S \lt 5$$
 Use `\bigcirc`, not capital O for Omicron $\bigcirc$.  `\Omicron` will not always
 compile correctly, but `\ln` and `\log` is more likely to compile correctly than
 `ln` and `log`, which it tends to render as symbols multiplied, rather than one

wxWidgets

@@ -1 +1 @@
-Subproject commit 5fd97439acaa39c443fe9a852d5806f5cb435a55
+Subproject commit 73809b8550d3919a95c65f07f94ea91f339b5487