Thanks Ric, I will respond in line as well, as I think that keeps the ideas more accessible.
On 2010-10-14, at 10:59 PM, Sherlock, Ric wrote: > Moved from the thread "[Jgeneral] Looking for links - online or off - between > J and natural language (example: English)." > Thank you, I agree that chat is a better place for the range of ideas that interface discussions require. > Feedback regarding this screencast: > http://bobtherriault.wordpress.com/2010/10/10/animation-of-visual-j-interface/ Also of note is a blog post by Sami Zeinelabdin http://notational.blogspot.com/2010/10/visual-j-interface.html > > Hi Bob, > Responses in line... > >> From: bob therriault >> Sent: Wednesday, 13 October 2010 13:16 >> >> Thanks for the great feedback Ric, >> >> I'll give you my responses/rationalizations, keeping in mind that at this >> early stage there will be many changes. >> >> 0) The representation of the noun argument (as opposed to a noun that might >> be >> attached to a conjunction) is certainly up for discussion. At one point I >> thought I would focus more on the sentence itself without the argument, but >> thought that having the intermediate values was more useful and that of >> course >> required an argument. Changing the linking to a curved arrow would certainly >> differentiate the application to an argument from the result of a verb. > > I think that is important to include an argument/arguments - otherwise it > will be confusing as to whether some verbs in the sentence are the monadic or > dyadic instances. Agreed. Sami has also come up with the solution of users toggling the argument display, which I think is an excellent way to retain the monadic/dyadic distinction while reducing the level of detail. [1] > >> 1) I am guessing that I put the argument on the bottom and the result on top >> through the influence of the Roger Stokes diagrams that I had seen in >> Learning >> J. I don't have any particular attachment to either direction, but must admit >> that I find the sideways 'tree representation' of J verbs difficult to wrap >> my >> head around. As an aside, since I am in Canada and I think you are in New >> Zealand, it would stand to reason that we would invert each others views ;) > > That's one way of looking at it, on the other hand I imagine it would be even > more logical for you northern-hemispherians to start reading a page at the > top than for us down here ;) My favourite example is the map of the Wizard of Christchurch [2] ;) > >> 2) I chose yellow for / to represent an adverb working on a verb. The verb + >> is blue (I felt it was working dyadically within the single argument through >> the influence of /). The result of the +/ does get represented as a monadic >> verb when it is projected into the fork. I felt that the composite verb +/ >> should be broken out into yellow (adverb) and blue (dyadic verb) rather than >> representing them in green (which is the view that the fork has of them). > > I agree with breaking out +/ into the yellow (adverb) and blue (dyadic verb), > my comment is more about the fact that the background colour for the whole > construct is also yellow. The +/ construct is not an adverb and so to me it > is confusing that it has a yellow background. > Excellent point, sorry I misunderstood the first time. It would be easy to have the tag containing / remain yellow while the enclosing structure is green (and still keep the + tag as dyadic blue). This definitely improves consistency. >> 3) I have always thought of trains as a type of implicit conjunction. I think >> it came from Henry Rich's J for C programmers, although to be accurate he >> refers to forks and hooks as modifiers. I agree that the result is a verb, >> but >> then the result of u...@v is also a verb (and @ is a conjunction). Forming >> the >> train as a conjunction, lets me imagine verbs taking on different roles >> according to their position, the same way a true conjunction would affect >> they >> way they interacted with the arguments. If the fork 'conjunction' was part of >> another conjunction, it would be represented as a verb in the same way that >> +/ >> was represented by green square inside it even though it is composed of + and >> / . Believe me, I'm way out on a limb with this one, so I really look forward >> to more discussion. > > I see what you mean, the fork construct (and trains in general) acts as a > type of conjunction - combines other parts of speech. However I think the > confusing thing for me is that you are using the background colour of a shape > to show/represent more than one thing - sometimes it represents the part of > speech of the word(s) it contains, other times it says something about how > the words it contains are combined. For example if you were presenting the > construct u...@v then the @ would have a red background and the u would have > a green background and the v would have either a blue or green background > (depending on whether there were both left & right arguments or not) but the > u...@v construct as a whole is (as you say) a verb and therefore for > consistency to my mind it should have a blue (or green) background. If you > want to differentiate forks perhaps it would be better to use the shape of > the container or the type of border instead of the background colour? > I do think having different shapes represent the different parts of speech and colours represent the function within the sentence is the way to go with this one. I plan to expand on this in my next blog post, but for now I would use the example of a semi-circle (think of a setting sun) to represent a conjunction x (u...@v) y The @ could be slightly raised in the centre on a red tag (conjunction) , while the u and the v would be at the lower corners with u on a green tag (monadic verb) and v on a blue tag (dyadic verb). The enclosing semi-circle would be blue as the derived entity is a dyadic verb. I might play around with the border colours as well, but the shape is such an obvious distinguishing feature that it is the one that appeals right now. Thanks again for your valuable time and input. Cheers, bob [1] http://notational.blogspot.com/2010/10/visual-j-interface.html [2] http://flourish.org/upsidedownmap/ > > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
