USAGE: weight of code

[Andrew Warren]

Karen Hallman wrote:

> 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.com
=== Synaptics, Inc - Santa Clara, CA