On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 12:57 PM, bob therriault <[email protected]> wrote: > Thanks for the reply Raul, I will respond point by point based on my > experience. > > On 2013-01-13, at 9:16 AM, Raul Miller wrote: > >> I would represent 0 dimensional arrays by including a grid (or an >> axis) for each dimension, showing which dimensions you are using. >> > Yep that is pretty much a given, although the most popular way of thinking of > arrays is the egg crate and its lack of axis representation separate from the > value of the cell creates some real challenges when it comes to empty vectors > in multiple dimensions.
An egg crate works fine as an analogy for a matrix. It gets weird though, for arrays that do not have two dimensions. >> We can box some dimensions, representing them as fine structure. >> > If you mean by box, to hide some of the dimensions in a box and thus simplify > the representation to the viewer, this was not a direction I chose because it > is hard to know which dimensions the user would prefer to see initially and > it would involve extra work for them to change the view. Yes, certainly -- showing multiple perspectives takes work and while sometimes worthwhile is sometimes just too tedious. >> We can use a non-othogonal presentation of dimensions. >> > I think that this is closer to the direction that I chose, if I understand > your use of 'orthogonal' to mean that the dimensions would need to remain > independent in how they affected the representation. My choice was to enclose > each group of 3 dimensions within a cube and then use these cubes to build > higher dimensions. Once you get above 6, things start to get messy and so the > challenge becomes what you can leave out without creating ambiguity. Actually, I'd classify this as "boxing". >> Are you comfortable using any of this? > > Comfortable was not the word that came to mind. There are a great many > compromises that need to be made in order to show only what needs to be seen > in a way that is unambiguous. This is why I came to appreciate the choices > that textual J has made. In hindsight they seem obvious, but that is why they > are brilliant. > > I am interested in pursuing this at some point, probably using SVG or some > other web based tool to increase accessibility across platforms. I think > that combined with Henry's recent grid representation using dissect > http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Addons/debug/dissect , there is a real > opportunity to move the 'feel' of J from 'programming' towards 'playing'. Fair enough! Thanks, -- Raul ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
