Lateral Encoding (LE) is a way of representing information on the loom by using the lateral position of a marble. It’s one of the two main approaches, the other being Presence Encoding (PE).
lateral position
coming soon
We’re still working on this part of the tutorial — come back later!
advantages
LE holds these advantages over PE:
- It maintains a constant number of marbles. All signals have exactly one marble and hole, which means our operations never have to inject a marble from a reservoir, or dispose of a waste marble. This leads to much cleaner circuit design.
- It’s legible. A Duo with a single marble literally lets you read its value off the loom.
disadvantages
LE isn’t appropriate in all circumstances:
- It’s inconvenient. Most roons don’t naturally “talk” LE; their native language is PE. So typically we have to translate LE into PE to use these roons.
- It’s bulky. We have to send our signals along Duos, which are 50% wider than a regular Path.
- It’s handed. Duos come in left- and right-handed versions, which is a minor pain to handle. (You can use either type of Duo in any situation, but the digits will look wrong.)