Roger Hui Said: "If you repeat the same definition in another way using different words, chances are the two ways would have different meanings, and the ambiguity would be increased."
Skip says: I agree with Roger's point that "chances are" multiple explanations can cause increased ambiguity. For that matter, a writer can purposely cause confusion, by writing multiple conflicting descriptions in a definition. However, I don't think that we are trying to come up with formal definitions here. We are trying to foster understanding, which is a very different goal. An accomplished writer who understands the function under question, and is motivated to provide understanding, can write a cogent explanation of that function in several ways, including examples and experiments for clarification. This is more a tutorial than a formal definition. That kind of explanation would be designed to efficiently communicate understanding of the function to the novice reader. This is a tried and true teaching technique that is used in other J documents such as "Learning J" and "J for C Programmers", so we are not talking about a new idea here. The tutorials use redundancy on a regular basis. Why not in a reference? The key idea here is that we are discussing a reference document as opposed to a tutorial, and the target audience are novices who don't want to read a lenghty tutorial to get a flavor of the language, as opposed to experts. This novice reference would be designed for random access, as opposed to a sequential reading such as the aforementioned tutorials. A novice shouldn't have to search trough multiple tutorial books looking for a tutorial explanation of a specific function. That is what references are for. In this case however, the reference is also a tutorial. Dan Bron's suggestion is to provide a wiki page for each function, with a basic explanation and examples. The page could also include various user's comments on their experiences with the function under question. A user describing their difficulties with a particular function, and their epiphany that brought understanding, can be worth a thousand examples. All of this could be extremely helpful to the novice who is experimenting with J. As James Folt puts it in his email: "hyperlink everything". http://jsoftware.com/pipermail/programming/2010-January/017798.html I suspect that the most useful way for newbies to get more help for a specific primitive is to provide a "more help" link from each Vocabulary entry to the tutorial wiki page for that primitive. The same would be true for the Dictionary, with "more help" links to a wiki page giving more explanations, examples, experiments to try, user's comments, etc The underlying issue here is that most people coming to J for the first time don't necessarily want to read a 200-page tutorial about the language. They probably saw some interesting J code on the Rosetta Code site or elsewhere, and they just want to understand what those few weird symbols thee saw, are doing. These tire kickers, along with a large set of occasional J users, would be the target audience of the reference/tutorial. Does this make sense? Skip Cave R.E. Boss wrote: >> Van: programming-boun...@jsoftware.com [mailto:programming- >> boun...@jsoftware.com] Namens Roger Hui >> >> >>> If definitions were written with more redundancy, such as by >>> repeating the same definition in another way using different >>> words, the chances of erroneous interpretation would be >>> lessened. >>> >> If you repeat the same definition in another way using >> different words, chances are the two ways would have >> different meanings, and the ambiguity would be increased. >> >> > > > >From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundancy_(language) > (capitals from me, REB): > > "In the study of language, redundancy is the construction of a phrase that > presents some idea using MORE INFORMATION than is necessary for one to be > able understand the idea. > Oftentimes, redundancies occur in speech unintentionally, however, redundant > phrases can also be deliberately constructed for emphasis, in order TO AVOID > THE POSSIBILITY OF OTHERS' MISINTERPRETATION OF A VERY IMPORTANT IDEA. (...) > Through the use of repetition of certain concepts, REDUNDANCY INCREASES THE > ODDS OF PREDICTABILITY OF A MESSAGE'S MEANING AND UNDERSTANDING TO OTHERS." > > > R.E. Boss > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
