On Feb 25, 2013, at 7:00 AM, bill lam <[email protected]> wrote: Gtkide-supported code completion will, as perhaps your "FWIW" suggests, be irrelevant once jgtk is phased out.
I do realize that balloon help & code-completion is a separate matter from other documentation. But I was pointing out that whereas currently J seems to offer the most meager and difficult-to-obtain documentation of what scripts are available and what verbs, etc., each contains (via the Help menu, which is simply not working for me in jqt801, or scriptdoc), such documentation, even if available, just scratches the surface of what a modern system ought to offer. While the underlying J language has remained relatively stable for some time, the J system has just become unfriendlier to use in recent years. > FWIW, > > code completion is available in gtkide. > > balloon help or code completion have nothing to do with if there are > in-line documentation in the distribution libraries. > > ??, 24 ??? 2013, Murray Eisenberg ?????(?): >> Definitely, a mouse action, or even an F1 or Ctrl-F1 or similar keyboard >> shortcut would be highly desirable. Even better is that such an action gives >> a short description AND a live link to the full documentation page. >> >> Compare the present J interface with that for a state-of-the-art programming >> system: Mathematica Version 9. In the latter you have not only such a >> shortcut key for short description plus link-to-help, but also the following: >> >> - as you begin to type a built-in name, by default a list of possible >> completions pops up; >> - if you just press Enter, you get the first of the list auto-completed; but >> - if you type more to match uniquely an initial segment of another entry, >> then press Enter, you get the corresponding name auto-completed; and >> - through a mouse action you can see templates for various forms of the >> chosen completion, select which template you want to use, and have it >> automatically entered for you (so you then merely type in the specific >> arguments. >> >> (You can turn off that default auto-completion behavior, which sometimes is >> annoying, but then invoke auto-completion, as described above, for any >> particular expression by a keyboard shortcut.) >> >> Having to search code source for documentation is so 20th century! Having to >> imagine documentation when it's been stripped from source is positively >> medieval. --- Murray Eisenberg [email protected] Mathematics & Statistics Dept. Lederle Graduate Research Tower phone 413 549-1020 (H) University of Massachusetts 413 545-2838 (W) 710 North Pleasant Street fax 413 545-1801 Amherst, MA 01003-9305 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
