Alan Stebbens <[email protected]> wrote:
> It seems reasonable that the people motivated to have a non-ASCII input
> and presentation mode for J should develop a working prototype, or work
> with someone who has the skills to do it, so that all of these
> discussions on an "ideal symbols for J" can be evaluated through actual
> usage and practice, instead of ideology.
100% agree. I wouldn't have for one moment thought that a one-glyph
representation would work for J if I hadn't seen that Emacs
screenshot. Now I'm convinced.
> J is open-sourced now, so it is a "simple matter of programming" now to
> implement this idea for an alternative input method and presentation for J.
> It's not much different than using Japanese on a romaji keyboard:
I'm an idiot. Why didn't I try that?
OK, I entered a few of J's graphs and digraphs into MessagEase on my
Android (the soft keyboard I use). I put them in as macros, with the
expansion being the spoken name of the symbol. I'm going to try this
for a while -- I know it won't get TOO much in the way, since
MessagEase doesn't automatically expand macros (you have to select the
expansion). The experiment will be to see if seeing the spoken name
helps. Unfortunately I don't have the specific skills to do any more
detailed or interesting tests, but that one at least is something I
can do.
Unfortunately, I can't promise that anyone else will benefit from
this, since MessagEase doesn't provide a way to distribute macros --
you have to enter them one at a time. And it won't help for me to make
a list -- if you wanna do it, just go to the J dictionary and do it
:-).
My initial result is that MessagEase macros are handy -- I get to see
the spoken name of the text I just entered in the macro bar.
Unfortunately, it's not like a language pack would be in MessagEase,
where it'll also show the possible completions; I only get to see the
spoken name of the symbol I actually type. Still, it's good at least
for this beginner, and I think the exercise of going through the
dictionary and entering spoken names will itself be useful.
> Similarly, the alternative J input method might have allow one to enter
> "i", which could be a simple variable by itself, the start of a longer
> variable name, or the beginning of a J symbol: i. -> iota, i: -> steps.
> Entering "!" would show auto-completions of "factorial", "fit ("!.") or
> "foreign" ("!:").
That's almost how MessagEase macros work; and if only I could create a
MessagEase language pack that would be exactly how it'd work.
> If you have not experienced an input method like this, you should try it
> out on a Mac or Linux box. It's very similar to what IDEs do for
> auto-completing method names on certain programming languages.
Agreed, it works well. I don't know Japanese, but I do know that the
systems I build all require language support, and I keep accidentally
switching languages by pressing ctrl-shift and ctrl-alt.
> Alan
> PS: Even if this discussion leads to a good alternative input method
> implementation, there is still a ton of work involved in transcribing
> (or rerendering) all the existing J symbols (digraphs and trigraphs)
> into the new symbols (whatever they may turn out to be).
Agreed -- and this is a great argument for enthusiasts to
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