Ric wrote:
> What should we use for the names of the primitive pages
This problem arose when the DoJ was first ported to HTML, and the solution
selected was to use a combination of opaque numeric codes
for graphical primitives, and (later?) abbreviated spellings for alphabetic
primitives. For example, = is d000, *: is d112, i. is
didot, and D: is D: ddcapco (and there are some extensions to these basic rules
to disambiguate, e.g. ^:n from ^:v). You can see
the full list with
open '~system\extras\util\helpndx.ijs'
Now, there might be some merit in maintaining this naming scheme, so that
search engines can infer a relationship between these
"new" vocab pages and the official vocab pages. But we can do that more
explicitly by linking from the new to the official (and
copying content, as Henry recommends), and in this era of SEO it might make
more sense to give descriptive names to the pages.
The problem is, as you asked: what should those descriptive names be? I worry
about using symbolic names, which might cause
problems in browsers and anyway will lead to inconsistencies for those symbols
which can't be names (which you listed). But the
only other obvious option is using the (suggested) English name for each
primitive, but that too has problems: first, the English
names are merely suggestions, and other names could be used in addition or in
lieu, but a more serious problem is each primitive can
have multiple English names for its several roles (monad vs dyad or
noun-consuming operator vs verb-consuming operator), and worse
several primitives can share the same name (e.g. &. vs &.: ).
So I suggest we come up with a page naming scheme which mirrors the spelling of
the primitive (like a modified and universal version
of the current alphabetic primitive naming scheme), and then set anchors in the
page for the suggested English terms. I think the
base term in a page name for any primitive should be the (possibly abbreviated)
English term for the basal glyph in the primitive
(as determined by typing that basal glyph into WP and seeing what page title
results).
For example,
* star
*. star. (I think this dot will be ok)
*: star:
*. y star.#monad star.#square (note synonyms)
x *. y star.#dyad star.#nand
^: caret:
u^:v caret:#specified-power (or something)
u^:v caret:#calculated-power (ditto)
We also might benefit by deviating from this scheme a bit (though we should
weigh these benefits against the cost of breaking
consistency), e.g. by rolling up all the closely-related composition functions
(@@: &&: &.&.:) into a single page, define their
common characteristics, and have a sub-heading for each flavor, which describes
how it differs from or contrasts with the other
flavors (and #REDIRECT the appropriately-named primitive page to this
subheading, e.g. amper.: --> under#infinite-under).
I think having all these closely related functions on a single page would be
more helpful than separating them, as their
distinctions are a common stumbling block. We might also have a general page
on function composition that contrasts not just the
different flavors of each type of composition, but the different types of
composition themselves (@ vs & vs &.).
Thoughts?
-Dan
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