What would be better is to divorce the name used in the URL from the name used in the actual vocabulary page. That was the reason why the URL names for the dictionary were so weird (d021.htm) rather than the more descriptive Ceiling/Larger Of (Max); the URL names are weird because you should never have to look at them, or type them. They are just there to name the target of a click.
The problem really is a shortcoming in the MoinMoin Jwiki software, which "helpfully" put the URL name in big bold letters right at the top of the document. If this can not be helped, it may actually be better to use some meaningless name, such as Vocabulary/d021 so that people would know to ignore it rather than try to discern some meaning from it. The real title would in the text proper. The page http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Essays/Bibliography provides an example of this. ----- Original Message ----- From: Ian Clark <earthspo...@googlemail.com> Date: Tuesday, February 2, 2010 22:03 Subject: Re: [Jprogramming] The Accessible Dictionary To: Programming forum <programming@jsoftware.com> > Thanks for directing me to the Discussion (as a wiki page). Is that > where we should offer our two-penn'orth from now on? > > As soon as I posted I realised what I wanted to see was not "official" > Jword names but a well-behaved expansion of the ascii primitives > forming them. Like: greaterthandot. A variant of Option 1 (qv) in > fact. One gotcher has quickly emerged, whose importance > shouldn't be > too lightly dismissed. Others are doubtless lurking. > > This raises a festering pimple of a problem: calling each ascii > character by its Right Name -- whatever that is. Only people who've > worked both sides of the Pond seem to recognise this as an > issue. Thus > in England, Hash # is never called Pound because that's a separate > symbol £ -- even if it is non-ascii. > > Observation[1]: w3.org came up with standard names for the so-called > html "entities", eg & > < which are hard to quarrel with. > Why don't we use these names? > > Observation[2]: Can we have the final consensus of ascii names made > available as a script? Something which will definitively turn > "[:" say > into "lbraccolon" (or whatever). It's hard to keep up with an emerging > standard in the form of a trail of comments. > > Since ascii is so important for the definition of J, it seems an > omission that JSoftware doesn't promote its own preferred (long and > short) names for *all* the ascii chars, and those confusable with > them, like the subasciis, the various quotes, also solid > vertical bar > vs split vertical bar. (APL doesn't either -- but that's another > story.) > > Ian > > > On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 4:34 AM, Sherlock, Ric > <r.g.sherl...@massey.ac.nz> wrote: > > Using purely alpha names is an option, but I'd prefer Raul's > suggestion[1] to choosing just one name. > > > > [1] http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Vocabulary/Discussion > > > > I'm thinking that most of the time the problem with the > trailing . and : etc won't be a problem. AFAICS it is only email > clients that try to be too smart. Then again perhaps that is enough! > > > >> From: Ian Clark > >> > >> That's what I thought at first. But google (trying to > recognise a > >> link) omitted the final dot. > >> > >> Can I suggest we use alpha names only? Like "ceiling" instead of > >> "greaterthan." ? I know primitives can have multiple names, > but does > >> it matter if we just hit on one? > >> > >> Ian > >> > >> > >> On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 4:07 AM, Fraser Jackson > >> <fraser.jack...@xtra.co.nz> wrote: > >> > Hi Ric, > >> > > >> > Your wiki page seems not to be there > >> > > >> > Fraser > >> > ----- Original Message ----- > >> > From: "Sherlock, Ric" <r.g.sherl...@massey.ac.nz> > >> > To: "Programming forum" <programming@jsoftware.com> > >> > Sent: Wednesday, February 03, 2010 4:51 PM > >> > Subject: Re: [Jprogramming] The Accessible Dictionary > >> > > >> > > >> >>I thought working on a page might help us reach a consensus > for how > >> they > >> >>should look and what should be on them. > >> >> > >> >> I chose something easy to start with: >. > >> >> > >> >> http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Vocabulary/greaterthan. > >> >> > >> >> I've also created a draft template we can use for other similar > >> primitive > >> >> pages: > >> >> > >> >> http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/PrimitiveTemplate > >> >> > >> >> This should help save effort when creating a new page as > well as > >> help > >> >> maintain some consistency. > >> >> > >> >> Please feel free to discuss improvements or make them > directly on > >> the wiki > >> >> page(s). It is easy to revert changes or view previous > versions for > >> >> comparison using the Info link at the top of the page. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
