My personal preference is not to have Greek or other symbols back by using a unicode font, I really liked the one character is a primitive of APL and I would prefer the same with the ASCII J. For that reason I prefer K. Additional primitives are reserved words (like the quad functions of APL).
The number of primitives has increased astonishingly in J over the years and replacing them by symbols would not reduce the confusion but the "duet" or "cartouche" are not making life any easier is my point. Paul Gauthier APL Software Developer - Senior [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: 312-739-3467 Fax: 312-739-3496 CheckFree. The Company that Powers Payment on the WebSM. http://www.checkfree.com/paybillsonline "Gilles Kirouac" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 04/04/2006 11:26 AM Please respond to Beta forum <[email protected]> To Beta forum <[email protected]> cc Subject Re: [Jbeta] Enhancement Request 2006-04-01 I learnt J slowly over a period of about ten years. The main difficulty has NOT been the character set. It is a difficulty yes, but easily solved by having the J Vocabulary page close by (have a few in the house for the first few months; put one in your washroom!). A challenge is differentiating new entities: hook, Atop and Compose; I had to build myself a card with examples. The Fork construct is easy. For an APLer, the "preference" of verbs for items takes some time getting used to. The main difficulty is the application of the rank of a verb and its pervasiveness through every conjunction. As Björn noted, that might be easier for those familiar with Sax. Allowing some APL characters could be an attractive factor, a marketing tool, but I too think it would add confusion. Creating new Unicode characters to be synonyms with the current ascii graphics could be investigated, but the current state is at least satisfactory. Gilles ---------- Original Message ----------- From: "Björn Helgason" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Beta forum" <[email protected]> Sent: Mon, 3 Apr 2006 17:41:39 +0000 Subject: Re: [Jbeta] Enhancement Request 2006-04-01 > Even if you change the J operations to greek it would still be different > from most APLs > > They are of course different from each other so the difference is > not as great with Sax as most of the others but even that would not > help you much having greek characters > > The confusion of learning J is enough so that you would not add > greek chars in and the beauty of being able to use any editor and > mix in with other environments would be lost for many those using > greek chars > > I would consider this to be better left as 1.april > > 2006/4/2, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > > > 2 April, 2006 > > > > Well, I definitely don't consider this to be a 1st of April joke. The idea > > has crossed my brain many times not only for APL compatibility reasons, > > but > > every time I use a { instead of a } or I write := instead of =: or > > when > > I come up with {.@;:.,,]_ and it should have been [;@:,;_1"@ .... :-) > > > > If using Unicode for verbs and nouns would be allowed I myself would use > > fonts with really "expressive" characters like the SIL Yi and the SIL Vai. > > > > http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=SILYi_home > > > > http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=SILVai_Features > > > > New symbols that don't have any "predefined" meaning are easy to remember > > because they pop in to a "empty" place in your brain, it seems. At least > > they don't start a long association process every time you see them... > > > > I know that Ken thought that it was a mistake to use the Greek characters > > in > > APL. I think it was a mistake to think it was a mistake. But there will of > > course always be those who think it is a mistake to think it was a mistake > > to think it was a mistake... > > > > I miss those Greek characters because they are just as easy to remember as > > road signs. They don't have to be decoded or parsed. That's a good thing > > with road signs. > > > > Regards, > > Gerald > > > > > > -- > > Gerald Mylog - a 5100 guy :-) > > ... ------- End of Original Message ------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
