> I'm an editor, not a techwriter. I rarely edit in-depth discussions of
> code. I have a journal paper that briefly goes into some specifics
> about code construction. The authors write:
>
> ...MIZ code with length n and weight k can be constructed...
>
> and later on:
>
> ...we named the code MIZ(r,k,n).
>
> Can a code have a weight? Is this the same as "rank"?
>
> My authors are from China, but this paper will appear in an American
> journal, so I need the more common term for a U.S. audience. Any
> thoughts?
Karen:
The "code" your authors are discussing isn't software source-code.
Rather, it's a rule for encoding/decoding information, probably either
for data compression or for detecting/correcting errors that might occur
while communicating the information.
In this context, "weight" is the Hamming weight, the number of "1" bits
in a string of bits. A "code with length n and weight k" is a string of
n bits, k of which are set to 1 while the rest are cleared to 0.
The terms are standard in the field of coding theory; no word
substitutions are necessary for your US audience.
-Andrew
=== Andrew Warren - awarren -at- synaptics -dot- com
=== Synaptics, Inc - Santa Clara, CA
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