The order of the dictionary makes a lot of intuitive sense the way it is: the pure symbols are at the top, the lettered symbols are at the bottom. As you go down the first column, the pure symbols start with boolean functions, proceed to simple math, then more complex math and non-math functions affecting shapes, sizes and orderings of arrays; finally, the pure symbol section ends with the more complex function composition operators.
Putting it in a more lexicographic order according to "a." would make sense if we thought people would be familiar with the order of punctuation symbols, something that seems very unlikely: off the top of your head, do you know if comma is before or after semi-colon? Ordering symbols is a fundamentally difficult problem and I like the way the Vocabulary currently does it but I'm also fairly familiar with it by this point. The useful redundancy might be to offer alternate groupings on other pages, say by categories like "set membership", "complex numbers", etc. On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 3:55 AM, Fraser Jackson <fraser.jack...@xtra.co.nz>wrote: > ... > Sort order > > Most dictionaries have a standard lexicographic order. The DoJ states that > J uses the collating sequence used by a. However the listing of the > vocabulary is in a different order. What is the reason for the current > ordering of graphics in the Vocab listing? If I ask J to sort the > graphics of the primitives in the Dictionary I do not get the dictionary > order of the primitives. I am sure Ken and Roger had good grounds for what > they did, but maybe now is a time to think about it further. > ... -- Devon McCormick, CFA ^me^ at acm. org is my preferred e-mail ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
