Agreed that the important thing for NuVoc is to give the beginner what
they need, in a form that they can understand without having to follow a
trail.
But asking a genuine beginner whether they need to see the ranks is like
asking a congressman a question about economics, and just as likely to
discover the right answer.
Here's a proposal to consider:
in http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Vocabulary/ltdot, for example, where
we now have
<. y (Floor)
we could instead have
<. y (Floor, operates on individual atoms)
The 'operates on individual atoms' bit would link to a discussion of
verb rank.
By seeing the rank described verbally, right there on every verb, a
beginner would notice this subtle difference between verbs, and would
eventually be tempted to understand what it means.
The questions posted to this Forum prove that you can't survive as a J
coder without understanding rank. I think NuVoc should accept the
mission of teaching the beginner that fact, as painlessly as possible.
Henry Rich
On 1/20/2014 10:47 AM, Ian Clark wrote:
@Brian - Thanks for your appreciation. It's encouraging. Throughout I've
had the niggling feeling that the J Dic was hard to improve on, and I was
adding little or no value.
Unlike the J Dic, NuVoc doesn't show the Rank(s) of a verb. The original
idea was for it to do so. But I think that's advanced information for a
beginner, and best seen by clicking through to the J Dic via the "See Also".
Others will vehemently disagree, and I think I can predict who they'll be.
But maybe I'll come to see that a bold button in the same place on every
title line to click through to the Dic entry would be good, if not
essential.
If anyone wants to go through all the verbs and add the Ranks to the title
lines, I'm not going to throw a tantrum. Not if its done consistently, and
right.
Can we hear the authoritative voice of a genuine beginner about this?
On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 4:45 AM, Brian Schott <schott.br...@gmail.com>wrote:
Ian,
That is amazing. Thank you for that great resource.
I don't know if I dare ask the following, but, here goes. Is there any way
to add a feature -- I think it's called a tool-tip -- to the main page
which would show the rank of each verb when someone hovers over the
primitive? If so, would other folks use such a feature?
--
(B=)
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