Comments inline. > From: Ian Clark > Sent: Monday, 1 November 2010 14:19 > > On Sun, Oct 31, 2010 at 10:51 PM, Sherlock, Ric > <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi Ian, > > I'm already thinking of an article: J: The Morning After. > I'll need clearer distinction between what comes as standard and what > are my add-ins. That was the idea of handy.ijs, but the notion hasn't > quite got off the ground. > > > I think in an earlier edition you mentioned that the words noun, > verb, conjunction etc were all defined in the stdlib.ijs. The J6.02 > version of this script contains a lot of comments and descriptions, I'd > recommend suggesting to the reader to open and inspect the script: > > open '~system/main/stdlib.ijs' > > Didn't know that about the comments. Is that version of stdlib still > available -- say in the wiki? If I locate it, I might put it there, > just to support the article.
I think that the following is more or less similar to the stdlib.ijs in J6.02. http://www.jsoftware.com/trac/base7/browser/trunk/main/main/stdlib.ijs J7's stdlib.ijs consists of this script and others in the trunk/main/main/ folder (e.g. strings, text, colib ...) all catenated together with their comments removed. IMO it would be better to retain the individual scripts in the shipped version but load them automatically within stdlib.ijs, much as you have in your startup.ijs. > > As a reader I'm not a fan of the tinyurls used as references in the > article, they break up the train of thought and don't have any meaning > in and of themselves and so don't give me any idea of what I'm going to > get when I click on them. I'd much rather the links be hyperlinked text > (not urls) describing/referring to the resource, and using the correct > URL in the reference enables me to mouseover the hyperlink and see a > meaningful URL. > > I'm experimenting with TinyURLs. They have little value in the wiki, > but a lot (IMO) in a printed article, where they take the place of > (numeric) references. The idea was, they're easy for a beginner to jot > down in a notebook. They are resolved in the Reference list at the > end. However the Vector editor may scratch the lot of them and replace > them by straight reference numbers, [1], [2], etc. That's not hard to > do. Might do it in the wiki too. It's a decision I can defer. Yes I think I'd prefer footnotes to the current TinyURLs, however from a wiki POV that will make it more clicks to navigate to a reference. I suppose there is no solution that will be "best" for both print and online usage. > > As an APL user who started using J in 2007, I'd disagree with any > advice that APL knowledge is of no use and that APL users should start > from scratch - something you also believe in, hence the article. In my > early J learning journey I found Henry Rich's J Reference card > indispensible for helping me find the appropriate word to accomplish > the operation I was after. Because not all the J words have APL > equivalents it is a useful addition/extension to the APL2J phrasebook. > > Disappointingly, I found the J Reference card a lot less use than I'd > hoped it would be, and soon gave it up. Back in the days when we Brits > had to learn Russian for scientific purposes, you could get the entire > Russian grammar on a single laminated card. I've still got it. But you > have to know a lot of Russian already before it's much use. > > This is not to say that others won't find it useful, so I'll give it > more prominence. Yes I suppose we all learn differently. I certainly find that I learn best when I have an actual project to complete. The learning then happens as a by product of working out how to complete the project. > What's really needed to support the article is to finish off NuVoc. Agreed. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
