From the pov of a beginner (I am a career beginner where coding is
concerned)…
The NuVoc format works well with verbs, less well with adverbs, but is
rotten with conjunctions.
Since its conjuctions are J's major gift to the world, this is a serious
deficiency. I only know palliatives. One palliative is to identify each
case of (u) in u"v (say) and document it as an adverb.
If R.E. is saying this makes the rarer functionality hard to find, then I
agree. The distinct adverbs are grouped only via the >> << buttons, plus a
bafflingly crowded cell in the main NuVoc portal. You have to be in an
explorative mood to dare hit >> or <<, and often the result is not
rewarding. And as for the crowded cell: you have to already know what it
means before you can read it.
Fortunately, most conjunctions are crystal clear after seeing a few
well-crafted examples.
The "Ancillary Pages" (q.v.) are intended as free-format, ad-hoc extensions
of a NuVoc page (or several), reachable with a prominent signpost, e.g.
See: *Rank For Dummies*. You can insert a signpost wherever you think
appropriate.
Rank has several ancillary pages already, but there's always room for one
more. This Is J, not Python — there's always one more way to do anything.
Right now I've no time to write the ancillary page it needs. But I'll
babytalk it if asked nicely. Let me suggest however…
++ Don't attempt a formal definition. They're only for J yogis – and if
you're a yogi yourself you'll want to argue.
++ Give a series of very simple examples, related to real-world tasks
++ Unpack the code, even if the result looks babyish. The beginner is
reading with only half a mind — the other half is overloaded with their own
immediate coding challenge. Like so…
u=: +/
v=: *
verb=: u . v
…etc
Most important for code using conjunctions, especially ("), which is apt to
look like your cat's got the keyboard.
Lesson over. Please leave quietly.
On Wed, 19 May 2021 at 15:39, Henry Rich <[email protected]> wrote:
> There were some words in Details 1 of
> https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Vocabulary/quote ; also buried at the
> end of the first paragraph of that page. I have added a bit there to
> make it stand out more.
>
> The real question is How would a programmer answer the question, "How do
> I apply a different verb to each cell of a noun?" We intended to have a
> FAQ for such questions, but I don't know that it ever took off.
>
> Henry Rich
>
> On 5/19/2021 9:47 AM, R.E. Boss
> wrote:https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Vocabulary/quote
> > J901 beta-k
> >
> > Language addition: gerund"r: the left operand of m"v can now be a cyclic
> gerund, giving a sequence of verbs to be applied to corresponding cells of
> the arguments. At long last you can apply a different verb to each cell of
> a noun. For compatibility with the older uses of m"n, the gerund is
> recognized only if the ranks v are not all infinite and m is a list of
> boxes containing a valid gerund. This is an incompatible change only if you
> used m"n with finite rank and an m that looked like a gerund. In that case,
> you need to replace m"n with m"_"n.
> >
> >
> > R.E Boss
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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>
>
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