One of the biggest problems with old documentation is that the recent changes in J from J6 and J7 are so great that a lot of statements about utilities and the setup of folders is changed.
I am not sure how or what should be done about the situation but I think that a new set of docs could be organised to reflect each of the environments and then some about what is common in all. We have the engine which is basically common to all but the front ends are vastly different. Front ends are the command window, J6 GUI, J7 GTK GUI, J7 JHS GUI and each of these different front ends are causing some confusion if you read about one and try to apply it in another. I guess that much of the old docs reflect J6 GUI and some people are trying to apply them in the J7 GTK GUI. The other environments are so different that people probably do not expect them to behave the same there. Never the less I think each need their own set of docs. 2011/9/21 Johann Hibschman <[email protected]> > Ian Clark <[email protected]> writes: > > > Can you please keep notes of your stumbles with the existing > > documentation? Feel free to pm me with them. There will be questions > > you'll have that you simply would not think to ask in a couple of > > months. This does not invalidate them. > > I've been playing with J for almost two years now, ever since I switched > jobs and no longer had q/kdb+ available[1], and I still feel like I don't > have a good grasp of how the "system" side of J works. > > By that, I mean things like the details of name resolution in > load/require[2], what verbs are defined in _z_, what is available in the > various packages, etc. I just noticed that JForC has more information > on this than I remembered; I don't think I got that far into it the > first time around. > > Things that would help would be: > > 1. Better links to the documentation on packages. It took me a > surprisingly long time to find the "Addons" page on the wiki. > > 2. Something like R's "Task Views" that give some introduction and > links to relavant packages for various higher-level topics. See > http://cran.r-project.org/web/views/ for examples. > > Many descriptions of J focus on its mathematical calculator aspects, > without giving much guidance for how to use it for "real work". > > Regards, > Johann > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > -- Björn Helgason, Verkfræðingur Fornustekkum II 781 Hornafirði, t-póst: [email protected] gsm: +3546985532 twitter: @flugfiskur http://groups.google.com/group/J-Programming Tæknikunnátta höndlar hið flókna, sköpunargáfa er meistari einfaldleikans góður kennari getur stigið á tær án þess að glansinn fari af skónum /|_ .-----------------------------------. ,' .\ / | Með léttri lund verður | ,--' _,' | Dagurinn í dag | / / | Enn betri en gærdagurinn | ( -. | `-----------------------------------' | ) | (\_ _/) (`-. '--.) (='.'=) ♖♘♗♕♔♙ `. )----' (")_(") ☃☠ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
