NOT.Preface:1 - Problem frame and the work of designing a notation

Use this language when an expression’s conventions need to be constructed or changed so that people or computational agents can work with it. The work may involve mathematical reasoning, a model, an algorithm, a diagram of a method, a movement score or another structured expression. Its subject supplies the distinctions and correct consequences; notational engineering supplies ways to make those distinctions expressible and usable.

A reader can recognize all the signs and still be unable to compose them, recover a dependency or perform the next transformation. Two displays can look consistent while referring to different objects. An abbreviated instruction can rely on preparation that its new reader lacks. These difficulties become especially visible when descriptions pass between specialists, people and AI agents.

Begin with one operation and an expression on which it matters. You need enough subject knowledge to say what a correct result would be, or access to someone who can supply that contribution. The individual methods then expose their additional prerequisites: rules for binding names, an interpretation, an allowed transformation, a temporal reference or a performer’s available operations. Knowing a particular branch of mathematics, physics, programming or music is required only for a use that needs it.

Keep a sufficient notation when its conventions already serve the work. A.6.3.RT.OE in FPF helps construct an expression around a needed operation under available conventions. This DPF becomes useful when the conventions themselves leave a consequential distinction, interpretation or manipulation unsupported. Repair a mistaken subject account at its source; notation design can make that mistake visible without supplying the subject’s answer.