Agree completely, as far as J and APl is concerned (since I know nothing about Arabic or Persian).
R.E. Boss -----Oorspronkelijk bericht----- Van: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Namens Matthew Brand Verzonden: zondag 15 maart 2009 14:15 Aan: General forum Onderwerp: Re: [Jgeneral] Teaching I don't want to be a killjoy here and do not want to dissuade anybody's efforts but sometimes that cannot be avoided so I will just say it ... I think the idea of introducing graphical characters into J is a bad one and that energy towards getting new users into J would be better spent elsewhere like writing Labs. I am happy with the ascii characters and do not think that it would be easier to teach J simply by changing to similarly unfamiliar (to non-APL programmers, which the learners would be) graphical characters. Changing the characters will not change the beauty or difficulty or ease of the structure of the language, although it will make it more difficult to use and communicate, it will just change what it looks like. For example, the Arabic language has a certain beauty in its use of the three letter root word construction and the various prefixes/suffixes to change case etc... That structural beauty is still present and is the same if you learn/write it in Latin characters. It looks more beautiful in the Persian script, but that is just my opinion ... someone who has not learnt that script may think the language is easier in the Latin script. It is just my opinion, and perhaps can only ever be a matter of opinion, but if you want to learn Arabic then you should learn the Persian script, if you want the learn English then you should learn the Latin script, if you want the learn APL then you should learn the APL glyphs and if you want to learn J then you should learn the ascii. You should avoid writing Arabic in the Latin script and writing English in the Persian script (except for borrowed words) and the same goes for J and APL. Obviously I am not against anybody making a version of J that has got a graphical character layer, I mean I am just a user/learner of J so can/would not stop it even if I wanted to, and I wish everybody luck and success in their pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, but the more I think about it the more I personally like the ascii method, despite it deceptively appearing as an ugly mess when first encountered, because once you get used to it is beautiful. Matthew. On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 12:14 PM, Raul Miller <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 2:29 PM, Don Watson <[email protected]> wrote: >> I also changed my table for translating u. or u: primitives into a >> single meaningful primitive. Last time I was assuming that the monadic form >> and the dyadic form had to have the same symbol. That led to a real mess for >> a couple of primitives trying to look like both. However, the system knows >> from the context whether the primitive is monadic or dyadic. Where >> necessary, it can have a different symbol for each. A new table is at: >> >> http://www.bcompanion.com/EquivalentSymbols >> >> Comments would be helpful on these symbols. I am trying to improve in >> response to your comments. > > I have installed microsoft's word viewer so I can read this properly. > > I have only one comment: > > The first example in your table became " " when I try copying > and pasting it into this message. > > This means you have not even begun to tackle the hard problem of > figuring out how this kind of thing could even be possible. > > That said, as a sketch... well... it looks like a sketch. It has > some inviting possibilities. But I really have nothing useful > to say because I can not distinguish any problems but the > largest problem from a sketch. And I believe I have already > identified the largest problem. > > Once you have identified characters we could perhaps look at > whether those characters are well supported and whether the > look wrong in some fonts and so on. > > I know you are attempting to circumvent the "can not type them > reliably" problem by saying that people will type something else > which J will convert to these characters. I think this will make > them hard to learn though -- it would basically be the same > approach as LaTeX, so why not just use LaTeX for that? > (Well, LaTeX allows too many possibilities and has too small > of an audience and can be hard for an eager potential new > programmer to install and get working). > > But anyways, I do not think we can ignore the keyboarding > and communications problems -- today's new scheme/proposal > would have issues with learning which can perhaps be solved but > hopefully even if we had a system designed on the "I type E and > I get Everything" principle we would still be able to copy and > paste our program text into email messages and mail them > and hopefully our readers would be able to see and manipulate > what we wrote without having to have installed special software. > > Anything else, I think, sets the bar too high, for most new > programmers. > > Thanks, > > -- > Raul > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > -- http://www.ixquick.com/ Ixquick Protects Your Privacy! 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