Looking at your current nuvoc page, I see 22 distinct "ranks". The
most common rank entries are _ _ _ (27 of those) and 0 0 0 (26 of
those). Actual numeric values are limited to 0, 1, 2 and _. and there
are also a variety of abstract values (mv, mu, lv, rv, lu, ru).
So one observation is that the casual user will not understand that
'mv' means "the rank of the monadic definition of verb argument v". To
make sense of this a person needs to see that a conjunction can take
two verb arguments, which we name u and v and that each verb argument
has two definitions, which we name monadic and dyadic, and that the
monadic definition has a single argument and that the dyadic
definition has two arguments (a left argument and a right argument).
Of course a beginner will also not understand the concept of rank,
either.
So maybe the right thing to do is to hot-link the rank entries to an
explanatory page, which present the information about that particular
rank visually, and with examples.
But how to do that? Should we break out 22 pages for the individual
rank possibilities?
27: _ _ _
26: 0 0 0
9: _ 0 0
8: _ 1 _
5: 0 _ _
4: 1 _ _
3: mv lv rv
2: mv mv mv
2: mu lu ru
2: 1 0 _
2: _ 0 _
mu mu
mu lv rv
2 _ 2
2 _ _
1 1 1
1 1 0
1 1 _
1 0 1
_ ru lu
_ 1/2 _
_ 1 0
Or should we have a page for each of the individual numeric values?
(0, 1, 1/2, 2, _, and mu/lu/ru/mv/lv/rv). That's only six pages so
probably easier to write. But I think we also need one more page
(which can be linked from those six rank pages - five if the "1/2"
rank somehow gets documented on
http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Vocabulary/semidot instead of its own
page) which explains how position in the rank relates to use in the
verb. And maybe some of this information should be repeated on the
verb pages?
Actually, thinking about it, _ _ _ and 0 0 0 are special enough that
they might deserve pages of their own, And maybe _ 0 0 and _ 1 _ also
deserve that kind of treatment? People seem to pick up ideas better if
they are presented a bit messily - it's much more pleasant to discover
patterns at our own speed.
--------------------8<---- cut here -----8<-----------------
And, of course, ... examples. Examples are what really make things
interesting, and while reference material is crucial, I think we are
going to need some fun examples for people to digest. Something not
too big, and not too small.
Consider, for example:
http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Catmull%E2%80%93Clark_subdivision_surface#J
I've been thinking about maybe building some game modding tools which
uses that bit of code. Games are fun and accessible and disposable -
and these are all important for educational contexts. But just having
the code sit there is not much use, being able to show "here's how
geometric smoothing works" in something that a person can take and use
for their own purposes seems like it might be attractive to some
people.
Thoughts?
Thanks,
--
Raul
On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 7:52 AM, Ian Clark <[email protected]> wrote:
> I've re-implemented "Rank Info" using MoinMoin "Comments"...
>
> When you write a /* comment */ on a page, initially it doesn't show. But a
> new button appears on the light-blue toolbar: "Comments". This toggles the
> comments on/off. It does it really fast too: on the client I guess, not the
> host.
>
> I like the effect so much (IMO better than tooltips) I've altered NuVoc to
> put all the rank-info inside comments. NuVocWithRank has thus become
> redundant and I've trashed it. So now there's only one entry page for the
> Accessible Dictionary:
>
> http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/NuVoc
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
