First, keep in mind that nothing gets committed without review, unless you 
already have push privileges.

In the absence of being able to actually construct the change, I like the idea 
of tagging things that need fixing. You can do that just by editing the 
document to say "This needs to be clarified in the following way:". It's not a 
real pull-request and wouldn't be merged, but it's an effective reminder.

--Tim

On Monday, January 05, 2015 11:32:11 AM ivo welch wrote:
> documentation is a tricky thing.  I am pretty sure you do *not* want
> me to make doc changes.
> 
> I am very qualified to state exactly where I am getting confused and
> where it could be better.  alas, if I tried to write it, I would write
> incorrect explanation, which would probably be worse.  so, this needs
> one person who is learning it (the consumer) and one person who is
> teaching it (the producer).
> 
> what we really need is the ability for readers to attach questions and
> notes to specific spots, that someone with knowledge can address later
> on at his/her convenience.  the more specific the insertion point for
> comments is, the easier it will be for the writer of the documentation
> to fix this later.
> 
> fwiw, I have written a textbook in corporate finance.  I needed
> student reviewers that told me where they got confused.  the material
> was obvious to me.  I don't think there is any other way to make
> writing clear.
> 
> in the absence of ability to change github to allow specific insertion
> points, I wonder if we want to branch the docs and request that
> comments be left in a particular color (say, red).
> 
> regards,
> 
> /iaw
> 
> ----
> Ivo Welch ([email protected])
> http://www.ivo-welch.info/
> J. Fred Weston Distinguished Professor of Finance
> Anderson School at UCLA, C519
> Director, UCLA Anderson Fink Center for Finance and Investments
> Free Finance Textbook, http://book.ivo-welch.info/
> Exec Editor, Critical Finance Review,
> http://www.critical-finance-review.org/ Editor and Publisher, FAMe,
> http://www.fame-jagazine.com/
> 
> On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 2:35 AM, Sean Marshallsay <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Hi Ivo
> > 
> > You're more than welcome to contribute to the documentation yourself to
> > help clarify anything you found confusing.
> > 
> > Regarding your second point, open() does not return a named type it
> > returns
> > a tuple containing some kind of stream and some kind of process, Pipe is
> > some kind of stream and Process is some kind of process. Hopefully the
> > following code snippet will help clear things up.
> > 
> > julia> x = open(`less`)
> > (Pipe(closed, 0 bytes waiting),Process(`less`, ProcessExited(0)))
> > 
> > julia> y = typeof(x)
> > (Pipe,Process)
> > 
> > julia> typeof(y)
> > (DataType,DataType)
> > 
> > help?> issubtype
> > INFO: Loading help data...
> > Base.issubtype(type1, type2)
> > 
> >    True if and only if all values of "type1" are also of "type2".
> >    Can also be written using the "<:" infix operator as "type1 <:
> >    type2".
> > 
> > julia> issubtype((Base.Pipe, Base.Process), (Base.AsyncStream,
> > Base.Process))
> > true
> > 
> > help?> super
> > Base.super(T::DataType)
> > 
> >    Return the supertype of DataType T
> > 
> > julia> super(Base.Pipe)
> > AsyncStream
> > 
> > julia> super(Base.Process)
> > Any
> > 
> > So what we can see is that open() does return a (stream, process) tuple
> > but
> > stream should actually be called AsyncStream and process should actually
> > be
> > called Process.
> > 
> > Hope this helps
> > Sean
> > 
> > On Monday, 5 January 2015 06:59:31 UTC, ivo welch wrote:
> >> I am reading again about the type system, esp in
> >> http://julia.readthedocs.org/en/latest/manual/types/ .  I am a good
> >> guinea
> >> pig for a manual, because I don't know too much.
> >> 
> >> a tuple is like function arguments without the functions.  so,
> >> 
> >>     mytuple=(1,"ab",(3,4),"5")
> >> 
> >> is a tuple.  good.
> >> 
> >> what can I do with a typle?  the manual tells me right upfront that I can
> >> do a typeof(mytuple) function call to see its types.  good.
> >> 
> >> alas, then it goes into intricacies of how types "sort-of" inherit.  I
> >> need a few more basics first.
> >> 
> >> I would suggest adding to the docs right after the typeof function that,
> >> e.g., mytuple[2] shows the contents of the second parameter.  the julia
> >> cli
> >> prints the contents.  the examples would be a little clearer, perhaps, if
> >> one used a nested tuple, like (1,2,("foo",3),"bar").
> >> 
> >> before getting into type relations, I would also add how one creates a
> >> named tuple.  since open() does exactly this.  well, maybe I am wrong. 
> >> the
> >> docs say it returns a (stream,process), but typeof( open(`gzcat
> >> d.csv.gz`)
> >> tells me I have a (Pipe,Process).
> >> 
> >> I know how to extract the n-th component of the open() returned tuple
> >> (with the [] index operator), but I don't know how to get its name. 
> >> x.Pipe
> >> does not work for open().
> >> 
> >> well, my point is that it would be useful to add a few more examples and
> >> explanations here.
> >> 
> >> regards,
> >> 
> >> /iaw

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