> From: Ian Clark
> > http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Vocabulary/FormalPageNames
> The script: charname.ijs now has the missing verb: cmx.
> I've also included: cut -since I've noticed more than one definition
> of that floating about.
(In the interests of using the libraries you could just use: load 'strings')
> NB. I've appended yet another proposal, which is in charname.ijs as:
> CHARNAME_CAMEL.
> This is for a set of CamelCase pages at the top level of the Wiki.
> They are all listed on /FormalPageNames/ . Notice they are all
> currently in grey.
> This offers a lot of advantages for easy hyperlinking --and easy
> access over the web.
> ...Somebody tell me the disadvantages, now.
Here are some:
* The "easy hyperlinking" isn't much of an advantage because generally you will
want the displayed text to be something other than the CamelCase text.
* Having extra letters (z) etc to make it conform to CamelCase is awkward.
* In some instances on Moin CamelCase gets shown with spaces between the words.
> On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 8:04 AM, Skip Cave <s...@caveconsulting.com>
> wrote:
> > It is true that the Wiki page names will mostly not typically be used
> by
> > the reader. However, I think that it would still be nice to have the
> > page names have the following characteristics:
I agree that the first step is to agree on desirable characteristics
> > 1) The page name should use common English names that obviously tie
> to the symbols on the associated page. An English-speaking person should
> be able to easily determine the referenced symbol from it's ASCII page
> name. Most people should be able to pick the symbol out of a list of
> all of the J symbols, given its' ASCII page name. This eliminates names
> such as "circum", "circumflex", or "asciicircum" for "hat" (who knew?).
I agree with this principle, but not wholly with the example. If we decide that
using a standard reference set is not necessarily desirable then I would use
the Wikipedia name for this "caret" in preference to either "circum" or "hat".
> > 2) The names should be as short as possible without loosing their
> > semantic content.
> > That makes "star" better than "asterisk" (shorter), number for
> > numbersign, amp for ampersand, quotsing for quotesingle , dot for
> > period, under for underscore, and tilde for asciitilde I know that
> > "star" means something different in the APL character set, but we are
> > only concerned with pure ASCII here, and the general English-speaking
> > audience.
I agree shorter is better, but think it is even more important that the names
chosen are the most widely accepted names for the ASCII symbol. I also think
that abbreviating words is undesirable as it leads to potential lack of clarity
and consistency.
For that reason I'd stick with "ampersand", "quotesingle" (although quotesingle
isn't really going to feature anywhere), and "underscore" (also because "under"
is already a verb name). I suppose that also means that we should go with
"exclamation" rather than "exclam".
"asterisk" is used both on Wikipedia and in the Red Book to describe *, so I
would go with that.
I think that "hash" is probably the best choice for # (e.g. from hashbang)
I'm happy with tilde and dot (I'm not worried about dotdot being confused for
colon).
In the interests of naming the symbol rather than the J verb name I think that
"hyphen" might be better than "minus"
I think we can use "quote" for " (rather than quotedbl) because Wikipedia
calls it a "quotation mark" and the HTML entity is "quot"
Although using "less" and "greater" is shorter I think that < and > are
probably both more commonly known as "lessthan" and "greaterthan" so we should
go with them. Gets around the Neville's issue with "less" too.
> > There is no reason to tie this naming scheme to any other "standard".
> > IMHO, it is more important to have an easy connection between the
> page name and the symbol that any English speaker can grasp, than
> following some standard. A secondary goal would be the brevity of the ASCII
> name.
Yes I agree that conforming to a standard doesn't really have that many
benefits. I also agree with Raul that we're probably spending way too much time
on this. :)
Here is my latest (and probably last ;-) ) proposal:
33 ! exclamation NB. no abbreviations
34 " quote
35 # hash
36 $ dollar
37 % percent
38 & ampersand
39 ' quotesingle NB. Won't really be used anywhere
40 ( parenleft NB. Won't really be used anywhere
41 ) parenright NB. Won't really be used anywhere
42 * asterisk
43 + plus
44 , comma
45 - hyphen
46 . dot
47 / slash
48 0 zero
49 1 one
50 2 two
51 3 three
52 4 four
53 5 five
54 6 six
55 7 seven
56 8 eight
57 9 nine
58 : colon
59 ; semicolon
60 < lessthan
61 = equal
62 > greaterthan
63 ? question
64 @ at
65 A acap
66 B bcap
67 C ccap
68 D dcap
69 E ecap
70 F fcap
71 G gcap
72 H hcap
73 I icap
74 J jcap
75 K kcap
76 L lcap
77 M mcap
78 N ncap
79 O ocap
80 P pcap
81 Q qcap
82 R rcap
83 S scap
84 T tcap
85 U ucap
86 V vcap
87 W wcap
88 X xcap
89 Y ycap
90 Z zcap
91 [ bracketleft
92 \ backslash
93 ] bracketright
94 ^ caret
95 _ underscore
96 ` grave
97 a a
98 b b
99 c c
100 d d
101 e e
102 f f
103 g g
104 h h
105 i i
106 j j
107 k k
108 l l
109 m m
110 n n
111 o o
112 p p
113 q q
114 r r
115 s s
116 t t
117 u u
118 v v
119 w w
120 x x
121 y y
122 z z
123 { braceleft
124 | bar
125 } braceright
126 ~ tilde
127
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