Dan Bron wrote: Remember that the goal is still to create a reference, not a tutorial.
Skip says: Well....yes. However, each reference entry should be a stand-alone tutorial on that specific primitive. So this hypertext reference document is as much a tutorial as J for C, but designed for random access instead of sequential access. I believe that developing this style of document is even more difficult to develop than a linear tutorial. This is because writing each of these individual reference/tutorials must allow the reader to hyperlink to additional reference/tutorial pages to help the novice reader understand the various concepts presented as part of each mini-tutorial. For example, a tutorial on a specific primitive may mention rank. The word "rank" in the description should be hyperlinked to an explanation that is another stand-alone tutorial on the rank concept, which may hyperlink to additional concepts. etc. In that way, a reader can take their own learning path through the reference/tutorial, depending on each readers knowledge level. I believe that this was the original concept behind hyperlinked documents. The Wikipedia does this fairly well, but a heavily-hyperlinked text, where almost all potentially new concepts in the text are hyperlinked to an explanation or tutorial of that concept, can be an amazingly useful document for all levels of expertise, when learning J or any other topic. Hyperlinking allows a novice to explore all of the new concepts they need to know, in the context of the issue they are trying to learn, by following the links to each concept. More experienced readers can skip the concepts that they already understand. It's the perfect way to build a reference/tutorial that fits multiple levels of expertise. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
