William, You are overlooking the option of writing the single-character glyphs on a touchscreen, using handwriting recognition. That solves the problem of symbol entry, as your input will match the visual output, thus there is no memorization of key sequences required. You could use a hard or soft keyboard for alphanumeric entry, and the touchscreen for symbol entry. A tablet with a keyboard (soft or hard) and touchscreenor graphic tablet could become the new single-glyph J computing device. For that matter, has anyone tried to write APL symbols on the touchpad that comes with every laptop? Maybe we have the next-generation J device in front of us, already.
Skip On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 2:51 PM, William Tanksley, Jr <[email protected]>wrote: > PMA <[email protected]> wrote: > > Yes, if the relatedness within each primitive set gets lost, > > won't a need for 3-to-6 times the number of J primitives > > virtually cancel any one-token-per-command advantage? > > No, it won't cancel "any" (by which I mean "all") of the advantage. > But yes, it will lose SOME. It's a tradeoff. > > By even CONSIDERING this we're making a different tradeoff -- right > now it's perfectly obvious what to type in order to get each J > primitive. We're talking about building an editor mode in which it's > no longer obvious. Tough choice! > > Actually we could build a quick mockup using unicode of a graphics set > that makes a different tradeoff -- simply make the : operators mean > "place an umlaut above the preceding character", and the dot operators > mean "place a single dot above the preceding character." (Well, it's > ALMOST that simple -- obviously there'd have to be special cases for > dotted forms of i and tall characters.) The result would probably look > OK and be very clear on how to type. It might be worth a quick mockup > by someone who knows Unicode (and J) well enough to make a fakeup and > a screenshot. (Unicode can overstrike characters, and a decent or good > Unicode editor will display a good-looking glyph for a lot of > combinations that one might not expect if one didn't know how many > combinations are useful in different languages.) > > We'd gain a single-glyph representation without losing the obvious > "how to type". We'd lose the iconicity -- but then, is it REALLY > iconic? Even relatively clear glyphs like grade-down are more > memorable than they are _obvious_. > > My guess is that the ideal will be somewhere between the extremes: > (Unfortunately, different people will benefit differently, but that's > unavoidable -- but I also guess that everyone can get 80% of the > maximum benefit from a single choice.) > > Extreme1: all exact APL characters. > Extreme2: all ASCII (as now). > Extreme3: all "joined" ASCII. > Extreme4: all newly invented characters (or animations, etc). > > I strongly suspect Extreme4 would be unpleasant. I suspect Extreme3 > wouldn't be bad. We all know Extreme2 is perfectly fine :-). > > But I imagine that Extreme3 might make a nice starting point for some > *slight* adaptations, like using the less-or-equal sign for <:. Or... > Maybe Unicode has an easily available less-than-or-equal with the bar > on the top, or a broken bar on the top, and maybe that would work just > as well. I don't know. > > -Wm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > -- Skip Cave Cave Consulting LLC Phone: 214-460-4861 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
