Invisible wrote:
> - I put all the technical terms in italics and coloured them blue. Does 
> that "work"? Or does it just look like regular emphasis?

That works. Generally, I'd avoid straying from black-and-white for something 
like that, only because people might print it in black and white. Since you 
use italics for emphasis, perhaps boldfacing the first instance of a 
technical term would work well.

> - Does section 3 add anything to the document? Should I make it bigger? 
> Should I take it out?

Either expand on it and include at least three examples, or simply conclude 
section 2 with "by the way, there are other things this works for, like 
financial contracts, expert systems, simulations of physics, ...." or 
whatever it works for.

Expanding section 3 to have three or four examples, but squashing each 
example into just one paragraph without explaining so much would work best, 
in my opinion. I.e., you'd want to say "this works for more than just 
parsers" without turning it into a whole nuther paper.

"""
Combinator libraries are useful for much more than just parsers. Many domain 
models can benefit from a representation of simple operations infinitely 
combinable.

For example, financial contracts are often represented this way. A contract 
might have a value which never changes or which changes as a simple function 
of time. One combination might be summing the values when building a 
portfolio.  Another might be a balloon payment, combining two simple-valued 
contracts by switching from one to the other on a certain date. Another 
might by an option contract, where the combination has one value until 
exercised, after which it has another value. The possible combinations are 
legion, allowing for tremendous flexibility in a way that is still easy for 
a computer to calcuate.
"""

Then do a couple more paragraphs like that. Maybe an expert system, or a 
physical simulation of an electric circuit or something.  I.e., enough to 
give the reader a bunch of examples of the simple operations and the types 
of combinations for a variety of fields. Then you can conclude with

"""
As the reader can see, using functional techniques to combine a variety of 
simple (even trivial) operations in arbitrary combinations is a powerful 
technique capable of modeling a variety of both mathematical and real-world 
domains.
"""

> 
> - What the hell would a real abstract and conclusion actually look like? 

I answered that in another post. I was actually thinking about it during 
breakfast. It isn't just newbies whose minds your writing stretches, altho 
probably not in the way you had intended when you wrote it. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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