As a newbie trying to find info on the JSoftware web site, I've run into 3 gripes for the past 2 years that irk me no end--and I've finally gotten up the courage to ask. As a newbie, I didn't want to particularly make a fool of myself in case there was something I had overlooked (which is so easy when starting J and which has been pointed out to me on numerous occasions). It has surprised me that no one else has mentioned these in that 2-year time span; I can't believe I'm the only person who is experiencing these.
(1) Will the hotlink to the index page of Henry Rich's "JfC" ever get fixed? The index link http://www.jsoftware.com/help/jforc/index.htm#_Toc191734605 gives a 404 error: "The requested URL was not found." It's been very frustrating to try to find certain things in Henry's online book without an index; "Learning J" by Stokes at least had a working index, which helped greatly in finding info when I couldn't use "JfC". (2) The forum archives search page has got to be the poorest I've encountered among the various professional email discussion lists I belong to. The absolutely worst aspect is that it will display 100 and ONLY 100 matches maximum. There's NO "Next" or "Prev" buttons (or hotlinks)! There's no easy and practical way to view, say, all of Roger Hui's posts, if I wanted to learn from "the master". The same applies to any popular topic with many matches over the years. And you can probably think of hundreds or thousands of similar situations. Even though the forum archive is possibly the greatest "gold mine" of information available to J users, its treasures are virtually inaccessible to a searcher without a tremendous amount of repetitive effort in specifying very tiny date ranges to work around the restriction relating to quantity of results. Every other email archive I work with is a breeze to find information in; the J archive is at the opposite end of the spectrum. (3) Related to (2) above, there's NO "Help" button (or hotlink)! That means there's no indication of what is acceptable to input into the various search boxes. I don't mean "what do the boxes mean?" I'm talking about the following kinds of things: (a) Are entries restricted to single keywords or are multiple keywords acceptable in all textboxes? (I realize this may sound stupid, but, without any indication one way or the other, it's a valid question!) (b) Can one search multiple phrases at the same time? If so, how? Can quoted phrases be incorporated in "at least one of" and "without" searches, too? (c) Can the author and subject be searched independently of the 4 textboxes? (The "Roger Hui" example earlier.) Or does a wildcard of some kind (meaning "all") have to be used in one or more of the first 4 textboxes in order to do an author and/or subject search, or can the 4 textboxes be left empty? (d) For topical searching, what is the relationship between the "old" forums and the "new" forums, if one wants to specify a forum to search rather than "All"? (e) And, not directly related to the major issues above, how does one search 2009 archived messages since the maximum date is 12/31/08? To me, a "try it and see" response to these questions in (3) above would be inadequate. No reputable search engine treats searchers that way. Every email archive I work with outside of the J environment has "Help" for users (with examples!). Although the issues in (3) are serious, the concern in (2) is of overriding importance. You're told there are more matches, but you can't access them--that is the epitome of frustration for a searcher. For example, with the recent "grid" topic I've been involved with: when you search for the keyword "grid", you get the message "Listing 100 of 689 messages found", but you can't access messages 101 to 689! I apologize if my emotions got a bit strong here, but these things have really been bugging me when I've seriously tried to find information before asking on the list (as is often recommended). Hope these can be fixed in some way soon! Thanks for listening! Harvey ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
