Two separate points to make about this: 1. Use of the term "vocabulary" invites terminological confusion. J originally shipped with a Help package of HTML pages, still accessible on the web as: https://www.jsoftware.com/help/ Top of each page is the list of links: >> <https://www.jsoftware.com/help/index.htm> << <https://www.jsoftware.com/help/index.htm> Usr <https://www.jsoftware.com/help/user/contents.htm> Pri <https://www.jsoftware.com/help/primer/contents.htm> JfC <https://www.jsoftware.com/help/jforc/contents.htm> LJ <https://www.jsoftware.com/help/learning/contents.htm> Phr <https://www.jsoftware.com/help/phrases/contents.htm> Dic <https://www.jsoftware.com/help/dictionary/contents.htm> Voc <https://www.jsoftware.com/help/dictionary/vocabul.htm> !: <https://www.jsoftware.com/help/dictionary/xmain.htm> Help <https://www.jsoftware.com/help/index.htm> ... Voc is simply a chapter of Dic, aka *The J Dictionary* (JDic) However... NuVoc on J wiki resides in a folder named: Vocabulary I thought then, and still think, this was a mistake which would only sow confusion. But it's too late to fix now.
2. P PadilCDX writes: > I like the format of the old vocabulary page more than the nuvoc page. But that is probably just me... No, it's not just you. A lot of people prefer Voc to NuVoc. And so they should. Anyone who was a J expert prior to 2012 will naturally prefer it. Familiarity with a Help library is the key to its effective use. Moreover… I too like the format of Voc more than NuVoc. For a start, a page fits on one screen (usually). But this doesn't translate to preferring Voc to NuVoc for all purposes, because their objectives are different. ++ Voc, or rather JDic, was written (by KEI and RH) as a language standard. The authors have declared (…reference, please?) that any language interpreter conforming to *The J Dictionary* is a proper J. In the 1990s J's audience was the early adopter, already expert in APL, who wanted a definitive document to study. During which time they could give it their whole attention. The examples were kept few in number, and each example tried to exhibit as many features of the primitive under discussion as possible. The needs of the novice user were ignored, or at least subordinated to the chief objective: to serve as a formal document. Doesn't the Help package have Pri <https://www.jsoftware.com/help/primer/contents.htm> JfC <https://www.jsoftware.com/help/jforc/contents.htm> LJ <https://www.jsoftware.com/help/learning/contents.htm> Phr <https://www.jsoftware.com/help/phrases/contents.htm> for the novice? ++ NuVoc, by contrast, was originally aimed at a specialized audience: the novice engaged in coding a real-world task, who wanted a quick and easy introduction to a given primitive. It was written in babytalk because the reader was focused on his/her own application, with little brainpower to spare for the task of extracting meaning from a slew of big words. Thus, for *Times* (*), each document starts off as follows… *JDic*: * denotes multiplication, defined as in elementary mathematics and extended to complex numbers as usual: *…[a forbidding code sample follows]* *NuVoc*: The product of two numeric nouns, x and y *…[the simplest code sample follows]* All else was sacrificed to that one objective: serving the novice user. And that includes the (Voc) format which both P PadilCDX and I find so pleasing. Others made the decision to expand NuVoc to become the all-purpose J reference text – and later, to freeze JDic and update only NuVoc for new J features. Initially I was horrified: how could the prime objective of NuVoc be preserved if it were to be overloaded like that – and how can it possibly serve as a language standard? (…please challenge if you disagree.) However, besides naturally being gratified, I soon saw the wisdom of Jsoftware not trying to ride two horses at once. Apple maintains two matched sets of documentation for competing languages (Objective-C vs Swift) – and even with its mongol hordes it finds the task daunting. But the implications for computer science are profound. J no longer has a language standard – as KEI and RH seem to have intended. Just one for J as it was when JDic was frozen (…I've forgotten when that was). It's a safe objective to jettison, because to-date Jsoftware is the sole vendor of a J language translator, and is apt to remain so. To sum up: it's quite permissible IMO for JHS and Jwiki to link to JDic where appropriate. JDic (although frozen) hasn't been deprecated: just augmented for a specialized purpose. NuVoc has extensive support for jumping through to JDic wherever this is helpful. But it would be nice to avoid labelling a link "vocabulary" since this word is ambiguous and confusing to a novice. On Sun, 19 Dec 2021 at 22:14, P PadilCDX <[email protected]> wrote: > I noted that in JHS the vocabulary link doesn't point to NuVoc but to > the older vocabulary page. Is that a miss? Several links in the wiki > also point to old vocabulary page. > > PS. I like the format of the old vocabulary page more than the nuvoc > page. But that is probably just me... > > > Thanks. > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
