[Jgeneral] Fwd: [Jprogramming] Report of the J wiki meeting of December 14th, 2023

['robert therriault' via General]

Skip,

I have sent in a invite to you at your consulting email.

Cheers, bob

> Begin forwarded message:
> 
> From: "'Skip Cave' via Programming" 
> Subject: Re: [Jprogramming] [Jgeneral] Report of the J wiki meeting of 
> December 14th, 2023
> Date: December 27, 2023 at 22:23:41 PST
> To: gene...@jsoftware.com
> Cc: programming 
> Reply-To: programm...@jsoftware.com
> 
> All,
> 
> I would like to attend the Thursday J Wiki meetings. How do I get an invite
> to those meetings?
> 
> Skip
> 
> Skip Cave
> Cave Consulting LLC
> 
> 
> On Thu, Dec 28, 2023 at 12:05 AM 'robert therriault' via General <
> gene...@jsoftware.com> wrote:
> 
>> == Report of Meeting 2023-12-14 ==
>> 
>> Present:  Art Anger, Ed Gottsman, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault
>> 
>> Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page.
>> https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-12-14
>> 
>> 1) Ed reported that he had removed the time slider as it was taking up
>> space and it only applied to forum posts. Skip Cave's Quora posts have been
>> added, but there is a concern that there are verbs that are included in the
>> solutions that are not defined. The solution may be to split the display so
>> that the solution is shared with a wiki page that has Skip's definitions on
>> it, possibly in an expanded text fashion.
>> 
>> 2) Ed also identified the issues that he has had with highlighting buttons
>> in Night shift mode which can vary between dark backgrounds and light
>> backgrounds. Changing the thickness of the border may be an option because
>> it is not affected by Night shift.
>> 
>> 3) Ed is working on creating some navigational ways to show higher
>> dimensional arrays. He is not looking at this problem as purely
>> visualization because he finds anything above 6 dimensions impossible to
>> visualize. His navigation aid is a three dimensional array of boxes that
>> has the dimensions and types of the contents. By clicking on a box he can
>> show the contents of that box with a breadcrumb display across the top that
>> shows where you are in the navigation of the array. He showed an example of
>> a 3 dimensional sliced torus although it did not seem to be displayed the
>> way that he expected. With this view it is possible to choose any pair of
>> axes to display the rest of the dimensions of the array. Raul related this
>> back to his REGEX lab which is working in three dimensions and Fourier
>> transforms which are n-rank with each dimension as a value of 2. Bob
>> mentioned Grant Sanderson's video on quaternions which has an excellent
>> display of 4 dimension space. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4EgbgTm0Bg
>> 
>> 4) Bob mentioned that Chris Burke had contacted him again to express
>> concern about the play-doh look of the wiki and the way that it might
>> represent Jsoftware inappropriately to some of its clients. The more
>> cartoonish navigation is actually independent of the traditional guides.
>> Bob felt that the Jsoftware site could link to the guide navigation
>> https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page while other links outside of
>> Jsoftware could link to the cartoonish look
>> https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Home.  Raul wondered if the
>> graphics could be generated from J code and that might be more acceptable.
>> https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Studio/Gallery A further clarification
>> may need to be determined as to the role of the wiki with respect to
>> Jsoftware. This resulted in a discussion about the changes that had been
>> made to some of the Jsoftware content that had been brought into the wiki.
>> Ed felt there might need to be a discussion that clarified the lines of
>> demarcation between J software and the wiki. Bob felt that a more corporate
>> approach would be something closer to the Announcements page
>> https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Announcements_A , but this might
>> not be as attractive to new users. The question that remains is how we can
>> best serve the audiences that we have in mind, knowing that it may not be
>> possible to serve all audiences equally.
>> 
>> For access to previous meeting reports
>> https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development If you would like to
>> participate in the development of the J wiki please contact us on the
>> general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J wiki meeting
>> held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is December 28, 2023.
>> --
>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
>> 
> --
> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of the J wiki meeting of December 14th, 2023

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-12-14 ==

Present:  Art Anger, Ed Gottsman, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-12-14

1) Ed reported that he had removed the time slider as it was taking up space 
and it only applied to forum posts. Skip Cave's Quora posts have been added, 
but there is a concern that there are verbs that are included in the solutions 
that are not defined. The solution may be to split the display so that the 
solution is shared with a wiki page that has Skip's definitions on it, possibly 
in an expanded text fashion.
  
2) Ed also identified the issues that he has had with highlighting buttons in 
Night shift mode which can vary between dark backgrounds and light backgrounds. 
Changing the thickness of the border may be an option because it is not 
affected by Night shift. 
  
3) Ed is working on creating some navigational ways to show higher dimensional 
arrays. He is not looking at this problem as purely visualization because he 
finds anything above 6 dimensions impossible to visualize. His navigation aid 
is a three dimensional array of boxes that has the dimensions and types of the 
contents. By clicking on a box he can show the contents of that box with a 
breadcrumb display across the top that shows where you are in the navigation of 
the array. He showed an example of a 3 dimensional sliced torus although it did 
not seem to be displayed the way that he expected. With this view it is 
possible to choose any pair of axes to display the rest of the dimensions of 
the array. Raul related this back to his REGEX lab which is working in three 
dimensions and Fourier transforms which are n-rank with each dimension as a 
value of 2. Bob mentioned Grant Sanderson's video on quaternions which has an 
excellent display of 4 dimension space. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4EgbgTm0Bg 
   
4) Bob mentioned that Chris Burke had contacted him again to express concern 
about the play-doh look of the wiki and the way that it might represent 
Jsoftware inappropriately to some of its clients. The more cartoonish 
navigation is actually independent of the traditional guides. Bob felt that the 
Jsoftware site could link to the guide navigation 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page while other links outside of 
Jsoftware could link to the cartoonish look 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Home.  Raul wondered if the graphics 
could be generated from J code and that might be more acceptable. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Studio/Gallery A further clarification may need 
to be determined as to the role of the wiki with respect to Jsoftware. This 
resulted in a discussion about the changes that had been made to some of the 
Jsoftware content that had been brought into the wiki. Ed felt there might need 
to be a discussion that clarified the lines of demarcation between J software 
and the wiki. Bob felt that a more corporate approach would be something closer 
to the Announcements page 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Announcements_A , but this might not 
be as attractive to new users. The question that remains is how we can best 
serve the audiences that we have in mind, knowing that it may not be possible 
to serve all audiences equally.
  
For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development If you would like to 
participate in the development of the J wiki please contact us on the general 
forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J wiki meeting held on 
Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is December 28, 2023.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

Re: [Jgeneral] add prefix to a boxed list

['robert therriault' via General]

This seems like it would get more responses in the programming forum, but you 
can also use gerund operands to &. and select which argument you want to 
process.

 names=:'Aileen';'Brittney';'Gail';'Fiona'
'Mrs. ' ,&.(a:`>) names
┌───┬─┬─┬──┐
│Mrs. Aileen│Mrs. Brittney│Mrs. Gail│Mrs. Fiona│
└───┴─┴─┴──┘

> On Dec 15, 2023, at 22:57, Paul Jackson  wrote:
> 
> Try
> 
>   (<'Mrs. ') ,&.> names
> +---+-+-+--+
> |Mrs. Aileen|Mrs. Brittney|Mrs. Gail|Mrs. Fiona|
> +---+-+-+--+
> 
> Or, if you like avoiding parentheses
> 
>   names ,~&.> <'Mrs. '
> +---+-+-+--+
> |Mrs. Aileen|Mrs. Brittney|Mrs. Gail|Mrs. Fiona|
> +---+-+-+--+
> 
> 
> On Fri, Dec 15, 2023, 10:50 PM Sanju Dutt  wrote:
> 
>> names=:'Aileen';'Brittney';'Gail';'Fiona'
>> 
>>   names
>> 
>> ┌──┬┬┬─┐
>> 
>> │Aileen│Brittney│Gail│Fiona│
>> 
>> └──┴┴┴─┘
>> 
>> 'Mrs. ' "0
>> 
>> 
>> I tried different approaches. I want to prefix 'Mrs.' to each name.
>> --
>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
>> 
> --
> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of the J Wiki Meeting of December 7, 2023

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-12-07 ==

Present:  Ed Gottsman, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-12-07

1) Ed reported that he can now get Skip Cave's answers to Quora in plain text. 
There is still work to integrate the text into the J Viewer. Ed asked if the 
time slider for forum posts was used by anyone. Dropping the time slider would 
free up real estate. Raul said he does not use it. Bob said that he does use to 
get a full range of forum posts, which is the opposite way of what Ed was 
expecting. Ed feels that there is ample opportunity to specify the search 
enough to get most of the hits you want within the 200 that are returned. Ed 
mentioned that you can also choose the sources that you are searching. Bob 
feels it is important to let people know that they are getting up to 200 of the 
possible matches, but that there may be further hits that they are not seeing 
until they further refine the search. There is also a dropdown that can narrow 
down the results to a particular forum. Ed will work on the documentation that 
may be needed by the user to take full advantage of the J Viewer. Ed thought he 
might try tooltips to guide the user.  

2) Ed is still exploring solutions for highlighting in night shift mode. Bob 
suggested just using the same colored background that might work in either 
mode. Green would be a neutral option. As another option, increasing the border 
style might make the action required more obvious. Ed has activated two finger 
scrolling on Raul's suggestion and it works better. Ed has included the old 
Vocabulary into the search with the proviso that NuVoc is the current 
documentation. Bob mentioned that he does often use the Vocabulary for 
information on Foreign Conjunctions. The search fields labels are now "In 
order" and "Any order" to make the search word options more evident.  

3) Ed is thinking about future enhancements to the Viewer that might include 
looking at code in which case Dissect 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Vocabulary/Dissect would be an interesting 
addition. If looking at nouns then Jig 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Addons/debug/jig might be an add-on to include. 
Ed asked about the limitations of showing large nouns. Bob said that the views 
of numbers extends into multiple thousands of elements. Character views may be 
a little more challenging because each character carries more svg code. Ed 
wondered about ways to show higher dimensions. Bob said he had patterned his 
view on the text view with extra blank lines between the dimension breaks. Ed 
was considering specifying planes and then moving through the planes in three 
dimensions. Then a discussion on visualizing higher dimensions followed. Ed's 
goal is to be able to be ready to present viewing options that would be easily 
available to users of the J Viewer. This may include searching of Locales and 
Global nouns to provide quick access to information.

4) Bob wondered if there would be a way to have JHS from AWS shown in the J 
Viewer, possibly using the space for currently used for navigation or display 
lists of forum posts. This would result in having JHS next to the wiki page to 
allow experimentation. Ed wondered if since we are in JQt that we might 
incorporate something like the terminal to allow access to J. (Editors Note: 
since J is already running in the console then JHS would be able to access the 
J engine and display within the J Viewer). This would allow cutting and pasting 
from the wiki page into the J IDE.

5) Bob showed the progress that he had made on the Home 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Home and Newcomers 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Newcomers_N pages and the removal of 
the list of bottom links and instead display those links with a category tree 
display of the links to the side of the content. In the case of Newcomers 
Essays https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Essays_and_Articles_N.7 this 
allows the body to be an annotated list with a sidebar of a category tree. This 
is even more useful in Reference 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Reference_R where there is a lot of 
information. Ed asked if the subtree would be shown on the target page accessed 
from the category page. Bob said it would not because a page might be in a 
number of categories and you would need to know  which category you had arrived 
from. Bob felt extending the categorization might make this less of an issue. 
There are 200 element limits to the category tree display and this becomes an 
issue for pages like NuVoc. Bob will recategorize the large numbers of pages 
into sub categories. NuVoc's category page 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:NuVoc_R.1 would be Primitives 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Primitives_R.1.1, Foreign Conjunctions 

[Jgeneral] Report of the J Wiki Meeting of 2023-11-30

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-11-30 ==

Present:  Ed Gottsman, Raul Miller, Raghu Ranganathan  and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-11-30

1) Bob welcomed Raghu to the meeting and Ed followed up with the J Viewer 
update and has been receiving positive reaction to the release of the app. Ed 
added the requirement of J9.4 to the wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/J_Viewer Ed has added color coding to the 
buttons and it does not seem to look as good on night shift mode. Raul 
suggested making a change to the background of buttons. Ed has been given pdf's 
of all of Skip Cave's Quora links which can be converted to html. This gives Ed 
access to partial answers for indexing. Raul suggested using the web view in 
JQt as a scraper which might have an injection that would allow the full text 
to be accessible. Bob wondered if the HTML version might be incorporated into 
the wiki and Ed provided the link to Skip's pdf. Ed had hoped to make a 
presentation to the British APL Association, but an opportunity did not come up 
in the most recent meeting. Rosetta Code is now included for the J solutions 
for searching.  

2) Bob showed the Newcomers pages that he has been working on to display the 
Essays most useful to Newcomers 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Newcomers_N. The page will include one 
line descriptions of the different Essays to give a peek into the content for 
the user. 

3) A discussion of Skip's Quora solutions and how they might be categorized. 
The feeling was that they are all good for newcomers, but are explicit. The 
feeling was that for beginners that is often good thing. Then a further 
discussion on tacit versus explicit and our representation of our programs.  

4) Bob started a discussion on how the J AWS might be brought into the wiki 
through using the J AWS to show the Wiki page as in one of the frame demos in 
the JHS framework. A challenge would be screen real estate. On this topic there 
is only one MediaWiki skin that is responsive and that may be the format that 
we need to go to expect phones to be used with the wiki.   

5) Bob showed the progress that he had made on the Home 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Home and Newcomers pages with the 
Category tree exposed. The feeling was that opening up the Category tree 
navigation as deep as possible would be preferred. The Category tree becomes a 
textual version of the icon images used in the coloured boxes.  

6) Bob asked Raghu (who maintains the k wiki 
https://k.miraheze.org/wiki/Main_Page ) about the more visual approach. Raghu 
thought that the colourful version is good for beginners and he finds it 
refreshing. In the case of the k wiki, it has been kept simple because of the 
resources required to maintain it. Bob feels that that is a good argument for 
any wiki in keeping content up to date. Ed talked about a group of server side 
people who preferred simple interfaces that they could find with grep tools. A 
philosophical discussion followed about expertise and the preference for text. 
ChatGPT was proposed as something that might change this approach for 
newcomers. J Phrases or Adám Brudzewski's APLCart 
https://aplwiki.com/wiki/APLcart might be a good target for ChatGPT.

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development   If you would like to 
participate in the development of the J wiki please contact us on the general 
forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J wiki meeting held on 
Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is December 7, 2023.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of the J wiki Meeting of November 23

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-11-23 ==

Present:  Ed Gottsman, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Reprot_of_Meeting_2023-11-23

1) Bob had read out an email from Brian Schott thanking the group for their 
work on the J wiki project and also several comments from the YouTube site 
which were very positive. https://youtu.be/SLJS84u4eVc  Ed plans to roll out 
future changes gradually introducing fixes and features on a monthly basis. The 
first method of making people aware will be through the J forums. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/J_Viewer

2) Skip has replied to Ed about the Quora entries that Skip Cave has posted to 
attract people to J. Ed now has a list of links to the documents that give him 
access to Skip's posts, but since there are hundreds of them Ed is looking for 
a more automated approach. Ed has looked into several scrapers, but Quora is 
vigilant in the ways that it prevents scraping. The Journal of J seems to have 
very large articles in a number of formats and may not be a good target for the 
J viewer. Ed has solved the bug that was slowing up the J viewer, but will 
leave the category column as is because it is a better functional solution for 
the user.

3) At this point we have had no requests for the J viewer and Bob wondered if 
we need a stronger call to action. There could be one put in the video 
description easily and Ed sent Bob and Raul his proposed message to the forums. 
Raul mentioned that Ed had not given himself enough credit for the development 
to which Bob agreed. Bob suggested changing "If you would like to take the J 
viewer for a test drive" to "To take the J Viewer for a test drive" as a more 
direct approach.  

4) Bob mentioned that Eric Iverson had suggested that the J on AWS server 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/System/Installation/Cloud may be incorporated 
with the J Wiki. Ed felt that Eric's solution could work very well and then 
there was an extensive discussion about how this might be done. There were no 
definite solutions, but the discussion was meant to explore the possibilities. 
The transcript below will fill in many of these details. It was agreed that the 
approach taken should be that a terminal window that opens on the wiki page and 
does not require the user to leave the page. A good format might be something 
similar to BQN's approach of documentation. 
https://mlochbaum.github.io/BQN/doc/quick.html  

5) Bob did a quick demo of the Home Page 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Home and the Newcomers page 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Newcomers_N.  Raul suggested that we 
might include the subtrees on the pages below the home page. Ed wondered if we 
could include the Category Tree on every page. Bob is concerned about the 
Category Tree pushing out the content on narrower screens. Raul suggested that 
it may be better to float the Category Tree to the right. And have the content 
of the wiki put into a div that could float away from the Category Tree but 
keep the content intact.  Bob's next project for content is to recategorize the 
Newcomer's essays so that they are grouped in ways that are more accessible to 
Newcomers. Once the Essays for Newcomers is done then Bob will work on the 
Reference and the Community pages to prepare them for launch. Bob felt that the 
Category Tree might be even more useful for navigation when used on the 
Reference page.

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development  
If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is November 30, 2023.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of the J Wiki Meeting of November 16, 2023

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-11-16 ==

Present: Art Anger, Ed Gottsman, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-11-16

1) Bob had received Ed's footage of his demo and there was a discussion about 
the audio that he had used. It was decided that Bob would use the existing 
audio and Ed would review and then there would be a decision on when to 
publish. Bob might also rerecord the audio if that was Ed's preference. 
https://youtu.be/SLJS84u4eVc 
  
2) Ed changed the category list on the J viewer back to a Qt list instead of 
his previous expandable version. The performance has improved. Raul noted that 
the new version requires that you scroll at the end of the list, whereas it 
used to autoscroll. Ed wants to be able to have SQLlite do line numbers in 
GitHub results because those results tend to be larger.   
  
3) Ed talked about attempting to include information of Skip Cave's Quora 
solutions. Quora seems to be resisting attempts to have Ed crawl the site. This 
is an ongoing investigation. Bob wondered if there might be a place in the J 
wiki for Skip to include some of his solutions. Bob is currently going through 
the essays on the wiki to select ones that might be most appropriate for 
Newcomers. Raul mentioned also that Journal of J could be included 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/JournalOfJ. There are links on the wiki, but 
the content of the Journal of J is not on the wiki. Bob had some reluctance to 
dump their content onto the wiki and Ed said that he would need their 
permission before crawling their site.

4) Ed feels that the J Viewer is ready for prime time and will start by posting 
to the J forums after the demo video is published. Bob suggested that the fact 
that it is in JQt should be noted for those users who access through the 
console. Raul asked that updates for Windows be thoroughly tested before 
release to avoid  extra noise. Bob asked about announcing on the ArrayCast. 
Announcing on the British APL Association is another possibility and might be 
pursued for their next meeting.  

5) Bob tested the new J viewer and ran into a few problems due to the fact that 
he had made local changes to the addon in the process of troubleshooting.  

6) Bob did a quick review of the work that he had been doing on the Newcomers 
page of the wiki. https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Newcomers_N 
Additions are the Return to Home navigation link and removal of the Scripts 
category as there were not many scripts that would work for Newcomers. Raul 
suggested using larger font on the titles and Bob agreed. Bob is also going to 
take Developers off of the Home page until it is further developed. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Home The information would still be 
available through Reference. Ed asked about including the Category's on the 
page that would be more involved but would be accessible for those who wanted 
the more detailed view.  

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is November 23, 2023.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of the J wiki group meeting of November 2, 2023

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-11-02 ==

Present: Ed Gottsman, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-11-02

1) Ed plans to record a screencast of the demo and send the files to Bob so he 
can edit and post it up on Youtube. Ed feels the GitHub search tool will be 
useful for intermediate users because it provides some options in ways to use 
the code. Bob thinks that the important thing is that the code that is found is 
actually being used and not just the way that J coding is prescribed. This may 
be a very good way to onboard a J programmer to common coding practices. The 
GitHub search might also be a way to see changes that had taken place as new 
primitives are introduced. Ed plans to introduce the GitHub tool at the next 
meeting of the British APL Association meeting.  

2) Raul raised the point that there is a difference between the Dictionary and 
NuVoc and that not all the information in the Dictionary has made its way 
across to Nuvoc. Bob wondered whether NuVoc might be administrator only edited 
to maintain the veracity of the source. Then there was a discussion on labs and 
the ways that these might be incorporated into use for the wiki and NuVoc. J 
Playground could accomplish this by loading labs into the edit window and then 
could be accessed from the terminal line by line.  

3) Bob asked about the way that breadcrumbs were used in the wiki. In the new 
category tree, Bob has removed the breadcrumbs because they are redundant. If a 
link on the category page takes you to a new page that is not a category page 
then it might have a breadcrumb. Ed pointed out that there is a back arrow on 
the browser that will always take you back. Ed pointed out that two steps away 
would still be disconnected. Bob said that the sidebar would still have the 
main categories and there would be access to the map of the site on every page 
under the search bar.

4) Bob thinks that the J wiki search tool is working very well and feels that 
it works well with the categorization. Ed felt that it is really important to 
use the categorization because that is accessible for anyone with a browser. 
The J wiki search is only available through JQt. Ed points out that curation 
makes the ball of information in the wiki more accessible, but what he has done 
is more about presentation and the  J wiki browser is the thing that 
accentuates the curation through good presentation.  

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is November 16, 2023.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of J Wiki Meeting of 2023-10-26

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-10-26 ==

Present: Art Anger, Ed Gottsman, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-10-26

1) Ed gave an update on the work he had been doing on GitHub searches. GitHub 
had been glitching recently and Ed said that this is an example of issues that 
can occur for the user if the database is not stored locally on their machines. 
Bob relayed a question that Chris had about crawling the wiki site. Bob 
understood that the the wiki was being crawled by Ed to build an SQLite 
database that is then downloaded to users. Ed said that that is mostly correct 
except that his crawl also includes GitHub and the forums. The Forums and the 
Wiki are crawled incrementally, while GitHub is crawled in its entirety because 
there is not a way of tracking incremental changes that Ed is aware of. Ed very 
much appreciates Chris' offer, but the consensus between Raul and Ed is that it 
would be extra work to save seconds a week. Having the user hit the MySQL 
database that Chris creates on the wiki introduces latency that does not occur 
with a downloaded SQLite database. SQLite also provides relevance ranking 
across the wiki, forums and GitHub.

2) Ed showed off his adjustments to the GitHub search which now searches the 
Jsoftware account and provides primitive glyph searching along with the line 
numbers of the places that the code occurs. Ed has also implemented a 'next 
character' view that tells the user what characters follow the code fragment 
that has been searched in decreasing frequency. The challenge is that J 
primitives are often more than one character. This provides a way to see common 
use patterns in code. Ed noted that the Fold conjunctions are not used in the J 
repository (not surprising because of its relatively recent reduction). Ed 
finds that this a really good way to find examples of how code is used and by 
exploring the common usage there is an educational advantage.

3) Bob suggested the glyphs might be entered in the same way that tryAPL does, 
with primitives entered in a complete form rather than character by character. 
https://tryapl.org/# Raul wondered if there was a way to alert the user that 
they had completed a glyph with colour coding of the text. The results are 
refined progressively as characters are added to the text input. The search is 
very fast and is using indexed search on a string of all of the code. A word 
formation version on the same string is possible. Raul pointed out that spaces 
are not always recognized and this is an issue for tokens such as ':' which are 
suffixes as well as standalone. Bob thought that it might be useful to see the 
text box separate glyphs by spaces. There seems to currently be an issue with 
whitespace having meaning. Raul pointed out that quoted strings and comments 
may require a different approach.

4) Bob thought that there is an opportunity to use this as a platform for labs. 
Raul and Ed felt that this is better considered as an exploration mechanism for 
intermediate users because the amount of work to create the labs would be 
substantial. Bob wondered if a form of annotation might be useful, but Ed 
pointed out that is more about the commenting of code rather than developing an 
educational platform. Bob suggested that a wiki page may be able to provide an 
easier access to the tool. Ed suggested that as much as possible he would like 
the user to know how to use the tool by the way the tool is built.

5) Raul pointed out that when he has fullscreen and does not have a close 
button. Ed was checking versions to correct this and will look into that to see 
that he is doing that properly. Another option is to include a close button on 
the JQt form.

 For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is November 2, 2023.

--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of the J Wiki Meeting of October 19, 2023

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-10-19 ==

Present: Art Anger, Ed Gottsman, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-10-19

1) Ed gave his response to some discussions on where the J wiki search should 
occur - server side or client-side. He feels that by having more crawling and 
indexing done by him, it removes the issues that can occur if the user does the 
crawling indexing on their computer, which would be hard for him to support. 
Bob asked if there were any thoughts about making the crawling and indexing 
supported by a wider group so that it is not so dependent on Ed. Ed felt that 
as the user base grows that may also enable more support of the platform, but 
it is not at that point yet. Ed feels that the crawling and indexing will 
always need someone to supervise it, but that it does not have to be him. Bob 
feels that designing this for a team approach would be a good idea. Ed felt 
that the crawling and indexing should run from a server. Bob pointed out that 
Eric had produced a page about running J on AWS. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/System/Installation/Cloud

2) Ed was considering doing a final demo before a general release but decided 
to delay it until next week. Bob mentioned the British APL Association meetups 
https://britishaplassociation.org/webinar-schedule-2023/  and thought that the 
J wiki search would be a good topic for the open meeting. Ed showed his splash 
page for his youtube video the application and Raul suggested that it could be 
used as a splash page while the app initialized. Bob also thought it could be 
put on the wiki page as a thumbnail as an identifier.

3) Ed feels he will give up on getting WSL2 to run J on Ubuntu. He thinks that 
there are so many Linux configurations that he could not test them all before 
releasing the app. He will rely on user feedback to provide user support as 
needed. Bob mentioned that for J installation by beginners, he mentioned the 
general forum as a resource for beginner's questions rather than trying to 
foresee every possibility. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Installing_J_N.4  
4) Bob showed the changes that he had made to the J Playground links on the 
home page. https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Home Rather than showing 
the full reference, he chose to show the Newcomers version 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:J_Playground_N.1 which is more of a 
user manual than the full reference. There would still be a link to the 
reference Playground page 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:J_Playground_P through the Reference 
section.https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Reference_R  Raul thought it 
would be good if there was a way to have the J Playground become a live session 
if it was clicked on. Perhaps a button that would take the contents and run 
them live in the Playground from the wiki. The button would reduce load as it 
would only load the Playground when the user wanted, not on the loading of a 
page. This started a discussion on providing a more immediate J experience. Bob 
felt that this could work well in NuVoc for code examples. Raul felt that there 
would be a challenge to creators if the creation process were not made simple 
and that would be a major consideration for implementation. A longer discussion 
resulted on how this might experience might be for the user.  
5) Bob talked about the process that he had used to make some pages the target 
of a category page through redirection. Redirection conserves the structure of 
the category tree and this can be reversed by changing the redirected page if 
in the future there is more information that could be accommodated on one page. 
An example of this is the Books link on the Newcomers page 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Newcomers_N that goes to a Books page 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Books/Beginners via the Books category. Raul 
suggested that this could be done with the Installation link as well 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Installing_J_N.4 or include the 
Playground on the installation page as a part of the overview section and not 
require a beginner's installation page 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/System/Installation. Flattening the tree gives 
the user a more direct path to the information.

  For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is October 26, 2023.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of the J wiki meeting of October 12

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-09-21 ==

Present: Ed Gottsman, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-10-12

1) Bob reports that he did not do much on the wiki while on vacation, but is 
heartened to see the contributions that Cameron Chandoke has been making, 
particularly in the are of Modifier trains 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Talk:Vocabulary/ModifierTrains.

2) Ed has been traveling as well, although he has been looking for a Linux box 
for testing. He is wondering if WSL2 is an acceptable testing venue for Linux 
on a Windows box. There was further investigations about ways to create User 
ID's to run J in a Linux sandbox. Raul feels that there are a lot of challenges 
in testing a UI application. This lead to questions to whether the J Wiki 
Viewer should be released for J9.5 as there are challenges J9.5's version of 
JQt with regard to isigraph. This may present issues with developing the viewer 
for new versions of JQt going forward. Bob mentioned that for Jig he uses an 
umbrella script to load different scripts based on the Users J version as there 
are challenges with tooltips with different versions of JQt.

3) Bob mentioned that he used the J Wiki Viewer very effectively to do research 
on Jose Mario Quintana's wicked toolkit 
https://www.jsoftware.com/pipermail/programming/2017-October/049263.html for 
the podcast episode on Modifier Trains. There have been other reports of users 
expressing surprise at the depth of the Wiki through using the J Wiki Viewer.

4)A deeper discussion followed on whether the J Wiki Viewer should be supported 
for the J9.5 beta. Ed was concerned that users might be discouraged with their 
first impression if it was J9.4. The application is solid in J9.4, but J9.5 is 
shaky. Bob feels that as a beta it should be expected that there will be bugs 
and that information for beta users should be that if they are using the viewer 
in a production environment then the J9.4 version would be preferred.  
5)Ed has been doing updates to the wiki database every week instead of daily 
and wondered if this would be an issue as he is nearing the limits of free use 
of AWS. Bob felt that he is more concerned with historical information and uses 
the forums and the APL farm for breaking news, but that users should be 
informed about how current the information is used. Raul felt that a message on 
the UI regarding the last update and next update would be appropriate. Bob 
wondered if Jsoftware might be willing to pick up a minimal cost for AWS if the 
value of the J wiki view is worthwhile. Ed says that the primary benefit of the 
application is that its development keeps him sane.  
   For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is October 19, 2023.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of J Wiki Meeting 2023-09-21

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-09-21 ==

Present: Art Anger, Ed Gottsman, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-09-21

1) Ed has run into some problems with the beta of the J Viewer on Windows. The 
decision was made to put the beta on pause for Windows and to let the testers 
know that Windows testing is on hold until Ed gets a Windows box for testing. 
Bob had mentioned that he had seen a flash on the screen before components 
expand. More troubleshooting on that issue in the transcript. We determined 
that JQt version J9.4 does work for the Mac so that beta test can go forward, 
while we figure out the 9.5beta issues that seem to be related to the new 
version of JQt.

2) Bob thinks he will be off the grid for the next two Thursdays and for now 
will set the next meeting as Thursday, October 12. If this changes then the 
invitations will be sent out in advance of the Thursday meetings.

3) Bob plans to build out the landing pages in advance of the switch over to 
the new look wiki. https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Home Also, required 
is for the J Search Bar to be put up in the wiki as it has been in the 
prototype wiki https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Home. Raul feels that 
we can do this when it is needed.
For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is October 12, 2023.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of J Wiki Meeting of 2023-09-14

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-09-14 ==

Present: Ed Gottsman, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-09-14

1) Ed now has 7 beta users on the J Wiki Viewer. The current bugs are that Bob 
has had a small issue with the update app button and Bill Szuch has had a 
problem with his Windows operating session where it takes J down with 
interaction. Bob and Raul have noticed that there are some mouse actions that 
will leak through when the mouse is outside of the application window and 
hovers over the J wiki viewer. Ed feels that there will be no more features to 
be added and so is looking forward to the beta cycle. Bob said he could also 
approach others that had been suggested before and will send personal 
invitations once Ed had okayed the copy. Ed is still looking for beta testers 
and can be reached at edward DOT j DOT gottsman AT gmail DOT com . If you are 
interested, you can contact him and he will relay the details for you to run 
the viewer.

2) There was a brief discussion about involving the J Playground and the Primer 
and possibly putting them together to provide a good online resource for 
newcomers. It would have to be a "lighter" version of the Primer that might not 
have some of the GUI or Data Processing sessions. Raul mentioned that it would 
be nice to be able to save state and be able to come back to specific points to 
the Primer/lab. Bob wondered whether there would be ways to at least keep the 
verbs and nouns that had been created. Bob also mentioned that he would like to 
simplify the URL of the J Playground a bit in place of 
https://jsoftware.github.io/j-playground/bin/html2/ A permanent (hopefully 
shorter) URL would allow us to start including links of examples within NuVoc. 
Ed asked if the J Playground had a way to save state. Bob mentioned that you 
can save the script into the URL and then when it is loaded the contents from 
the URL are put into the edit window. Raul mentioned a tiny URL that he formed 
as an example https://tinyurl.com/rotatingF that incorporates shaders, 
javascript and two lines of J. 

3) Raul mentioned that there could be a lot of areas that we could expand into 
such as structural analysis. It would be interesting to see if it could be 
accepted as a general purpose language. Raul mentioned Cliff Reiter and Henry 
Rich as two who were involved with education. Bob mentioned Tom Allen as 
someone who has been doing a lot of work on advanced physics within the wiki 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/User:Tom_Allen . Bob asked whether there were 
opportunities to explore certain disciplines as content for the wiki. Raul felt 
that labs were better used for this purpose. The wiki might be better used as 
an educational tool. Ed mentioned that the challenges with going into specific 
disciplines is that there are already existing libraries of tools that may be 
further advanced. Raul wondered if there were an opportunity to use J as a more 
flexible tool that may allow you to approach novel problems. Ed felt that there 
may be a way to use J to teach about how to think about problems. Ed wondered 
about how J might have been used with Jupyter workbooks (editor's note: Tom 
McGuire has done some work in this area 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/User:Tom_McGuire/JJupyterNotebooks).   

3) Bob wondered about topics that should go into the Developer Category for the 
wiki. Raul felt that areas of interest like structural analysis would be good 
examples in specific topics that would bring in good people who would further 
explore and develop using J. Ed wondered what would make somebody reach for J 
rather than Python or Swift. One challenge is the language knowledge itself, 
but a second is that it is more difficult to create artifacts with J than it is 
with other languages because some of the infrastructure available. Ed mentioned 
Norman Drinkwater's page on developing a stand alone 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Guides/J9_Standalone application and Ed still 
finds that difficult. Raul felt that except for the DLL's everything could be a 
single file comprising of the text files. There may be issues with unpacking 
zip files and security. Ed felt that the web becomes a more attractive 
distribution method. Raul pointed out that one of J's advantages is that it can 
be used across multiple platforms. Ed thought that the browser was a friendlier 
multi-platform. Raul brought up JHS which is the browser version of J 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Guides/JHS . Ed felt that if he could develop 
with J the way that he does with JavaScript he would be happy. Where he could 
have J tags with the same power of JavaScript tags with controlling the DOM. 
Ed's question is whether there is debugging support in J for the J Playground. 
Ed says it may be a documentation issue with more explanation being provided in 
the wiki. Ed would like J to 

[Jgeneral] The new episode of the ArrayCast podcast features Marshall Lochbaum, who previously coded in J

['robert therriault' via General]

In the new episode of the ArrayCast podcast, Marshall Lochbaum tells us all 
about Singeli, a fast intermediate representation language that can support the 
array languages in an array friendly way.

Host: Conor Hoekstra

Panel:  Marshall Lochbaum, Adám Brudzewsky, Stephen Taylor and Bob Therriault.

https://www.arraycast.com/episodes/episode62-what-is-singeli
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of the J Wiki Meeting of September 07, 2023

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-09-07 ==

Present: Art Anger, Ed Gottsman, Devon McCormick, and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-09-07

1) Ed did a quick overview of the J Wiki Browser for Devon and reviewed the 
feedback that he had received on the application, which was very positive. 
There was a discussion about the interface and the use of ticks in the sliders. 
The database is currently only being updated once a day and this was deemed 
sufficient at this time.

2) It was agreed that more beta testers were needed and it was suggested that 
Ed make a presentation at the next NYCJUG meeting and that Bob would promote 
the beta test opportunities on the next ArrayCast podcast. 

3) Further discussion on the role that categories could play in selecting areas 
of interest within the LiveSearch on the wiki browser. Possibilities were that 
certain high level categories might be selected to group the results of 
LiveSearch into common areas such as Math, Newcomers, Developers etc. Devon 
raised a concern about the absence of a feedback mechanism in the search tool, 
which Ed confirmed. Bob mentioned a comment on the YouTube demo regarding the 
reversal of the expand and shrink buttons. Ed pointed out that this could cause 
a conflict when the cursor hovers over the browser window, causing it to expand 
if it had just been shrunk. 

3) Bob reviewed the work that he had done on the J Primer with regard to 
improved navigation and bringing he content up to date. Content changes 
required included the new manner of creating GUI forms in JQt, a change to the 
file structure for loading files in newer versions of J, and verbs such as nub 
count that had not been included in the J libraries since 2007. Bob had checked 
the results of each step of the Primer using J9.4 in the JQt IDE. Bob will 
present the new version of the J Primer during the NYCJUG meeting in the 
Beginner's Regatta section. Bob also said that he would take a look at 
including the direct definition {{...}} in a future version of the Primer

4) There was a discussion about integrating J into web pages to increase its 
utility. Bob mentioned JHS as a form that does this, but would require the J 
engine to be downloaded. Although, this week Eric had updated the methods of 
putting a J server on an AWS instance so that it could serve as a remote 
personal J server. https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/System/Installation/Cloud 
There was further discussion about including a version of the Primer on the J 
Playground to allow easier access to newcomers. 

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is September 14th, 
2023.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of the J Wiki Meeting of 2023-08-31

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-08-31 ==

Present: Art Anger, Ed Gottsman, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-08-31

1) Ed did a demo which is available on YouTube 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emVBSN6EZFI including an invitation to try the 
tool out as part of the beta test. If you are interested you can contact 
edward.j.gottsman AT gmail DOT com. 

2) A discussion responding to the demonstration followed. Ed is hoping for a 
number of users to try this out and most importantly provide feedback. Raul 
wondered if the download of the database could be done in the background, but 
Ed thought that he would like to see the reaction from users before doing too 
many more changes. Bob found that his downloads were stable last week when he 
was camping. 

3) Ed asked Bob about the ways that LiveSearch might be integrated into the 
wiki. Bob said he was wondering if LiveSearch would make the Reference section 
obsolete. Further Bob wondered if Categories could be used as part of the 
LiveSearch to select areas of user interest. Bob also wondered if LiveSearch 
could be used in a wider context outside of the JQt environment, so that it 
became part of the browser. Ed suggested that this could be done by 
containerizing the LiveSearch database on a server and making that database a 
target of the wiki search window. Raul thought that there should be a way of 
tracking the order of requests so that asynchronous updates could be 
accommodated without overriding subsequent queries. Ed thinks that it is 
doable, but is not signing up for the task.

4) Ed raised the issue that SQLite is not "stemming" the results so that exact 
word search is required and Raul showed that there is a setting that will allow 
the stemming to be invoked as the database is created. Ed also hoped to find a 
way to have the search hits automatically highlight the result within the 
target page. Ed wondered if there is a way to at least indicate the pages that 
are hits in the navigation area. This is attractive as the results can be 
highlighted automatically. Bob's solution requires much more manual work, so 
that while it would be effective if done, it is less likely to be accomplished. 
Bob suggested that if the response for beta users was low that the beta test 
could be announced on the ArrayCast to widen the audience. It was agreed that 
the beta should go forward and that the new suggestions could be included as 
they are evaluated. 

5) A discussion of Categories incorporated in the LiveSearch followed. Bob felt 
that the tags that had been developed organically and were flat. This means 
that the categorization that Bob has done is good to present information and 
the tags may be able to be made more effective with their inclusion in 
LiveSearch. 

5) Bob did quick review of the Primer as it nears its renovation. There was a 
forum post that was made about the GUI information being out of date, which was 
one of the reasons that Bob undertook the renovation. In addition to the GUI 
information there needs to be some other changes to resources that may have 
changed. An example is that NuVoc has superseded the J Dictionary as a source 
of current information. This needs to be done so that the information in the J 
Dictionary is not eliminated as being old. Ed wondered if there was a need of 
'more' documentation. Raul suggested that the need is for 'better'. The wiki 
does not remove information, but Bob thought that it was more important that 
navigation of the wiki steers people into the more useful areas. 

6) Ed felt that there could be very useful information provided that would 
allow users to create standalone J applications. Ed referenced the work that 
Norman Drinkwater had done of how to do stand alone within JQt 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Guides/J9_Standalone and whether there were 
ways to do that with console or JHS.

7) Bob's next work after the Primer is completed is to build out the 
presentation of the categories in the New Look of the wiki. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Home

8) The meeting ended with discussions on how J could be made more popular among 
coders and the general public. Worth a read of the transcript if you are 
interested. 

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is September 7th, 
2023.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] The array language Nial is the subject of the ArrayCast podcast with guest Lynn Sutherland

['robert therriault' via General]

Lynn Sutherland, who worked on the array language Nial during its initial 
development in the 1980's, is the guest on this episode of ArrayCast.

Host: Conor Hoekstra

Panel:  Marshall Lochbaum, Adám Brudzewsky, Stephen Taylor and Bob Therriault.

https://www.arraycast.com/episodes/episode61-lynn-sutherland-and-nial
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Re: [Jgeneral] help on gui

['robert therriault' via General]

Markus,

You have asked a very timely question. I have been updating the Primer over the 
last month and GUI part 1 is the page that I am currrently working on. Ed's 
suggestion is an excellent one for the time being. I would appreciate any 
feedback that you can give as I update the GUI section over the next couple of 
days. 

Cheers, bob

> On Aug 30, 2023, at 08:36, Schmidt-Gröttrup, Markus 
>  wrote:
> 
> I need help on GUI programming.
> The page https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Help/Primer/100_GUI_part_1 
> unfortuneatly is not up to date, I miss the menu item   Edit|Form Editor.
> 
> Any tutorial available in the wiki?
> 
> Thanks for a tip,
> Markus
> 
> 
> --
> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of J Wiki Meeting of 2023-08-17

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-08-17 ==

Present: Ed Gottsman, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-08-17

1) Ed updated on Live Search and has made it a local database search which is 
pretty quick. The biggest challenge is relevance ranking and that requires that 
you get all of the results before you can assess the relevance rank. The 
challenge discussed in depth was the fact that the first character entered 
creates a large result response, before the second character re-initiates the 
search. Details can be reviewed in the transcript. 

2) A discussion of how to go about updating the database now that there is a 
large SQL database and a smaller log database. The interface may need to be 
addressed if the databases remain separate.

3) Bob showed that the results in Live Search don't exactly match the result on 
the webpage. This was determined to be html and wiki markup that does not show 
on the web page. There was discussion on the solutions to this that can be 
reviewed in the transcript.

4) Bob initiated a discussion about how Live Search, the Playground and the 
curation of the wiki would work together in the best possible way. The attempt 
is to try and develop the components in a way that the end result will be 
better. Bob talked about J Playground being used in NuVoc and Ed mentioned that 
he wondered whether J Playground should be in the J Wiki Browser. Bob thought 
that the Playground does not have to have a link in the wiki browser if it An 
example Bob gave was whether the Reference section of categorization has been 
replaced by Live Search. This would mean that categorization in Reference may 
need to be done differently. Other areas such as Developer and Newcomer would 
require curation to make sure that the information is appropriate to the 
audience. Bob felt that this is the time to review that because it is not yet 
in use. This is a foundation for further discussion.

5) Raul asked if New Pages could be added to the Sidebar, since they often 
indicate new areas of development. Bob said that he would add that. 

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is August 24th, 2023.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Rob Pike, co-creator of the Go language is a big fan of array languages

['robert therriault' via General]

Rob Pike, co-creator of the Go language and UTF-8, tells us why every 
programmer should know about the array languages. 

Host: Conor Hoekstra

Panel:  Marshall Lochbaum, Adám Brudzewsky, Stephen Taylor and Bob Therriault.

https://www.arraycast.com/episodes/episode60-rob-pike
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of the J wiki meeting of 2023-08-10

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-08-10 ==

Present: Art Anger, Ed Gottsman, and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-08-10

1) Ed presented the issues that he was having incorporating Live Search into 
AWS because successive uses of curl are completed sequentially, which slows 
down the refinement of the search as characters are added by the user. 

2) Bob and Ed further discussed whether curl might be used to keep a version of 
the wiki stored locally on the user's machine up to date from AWS with the Live 
Search referencing this local repository.

3) Bob talked about the wiki being an educational tool. This requires further 
categorization before it is sufficiently advanced to allow more effective 
participation. Ed posited that search is an aspect of categorization in the 
sense that search automatically categorizes to present its results. Ed feels 
most of his work is more presentation.

4) Ed felt that there is a predisposition in the J community towards math 
rather than as a general purpose language. The direction of the wiki as an 
education tool seems to reinforce math uses within the J community. Bob 
mentioned combinators and the fact that the language can use those effectively 
beyond math. The standard library is an example of the general purpose 
programming language in practice and that way of using J could be a better 
bridge to general programmers. Ed feels that this is a missed opportunity as he 
finds J a really good general purpose programming environment.

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is August 17th, 2023.
--
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[Jgeneral] Report of the J Wiki Meeting of August 3, 2023

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-08-03 ==

Present: Art Anger, Chris Burke, Ed Gottsman, Raul Miller and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-08-03

1) We began answering Chris' question of when we would be done with the 
prototype wiki,https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Home with Bob saying 
that we were pretty much done now. Chris said he would bring a new machine that 
would incorporate a newer version of the MediaWiki and he would let us know 
when that change would be made in the next month. The prototype would be left 
up for a few weeks after and then taken down. If information from the prototype 
wiki is required after that the machines will just be left offline and 
information can still be retrieved. Target date for the new machine is 
September 1st.

2) We started off with a discussion about Live Search and there was some 
confusion between the Live Search and the J wiki Browser. Chris said the J Wiki 
browser was working well for him on Unix although Chris did not think he was a 
target for the application since he knows the wiki pretty well. Ed presented 
the challenges with Live Search which is an application that is based on his 
machine and requires some local storage. Ed then did a demo of Live Search 
which allows extensive search of forums and wiki for J glyphs. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IId4hgTKp08 Chris wondered how the page sources 
were being done and Ed said he had written a crawler. Chris said that he 
already has the pages in a database in text form at about 50 megabytes. Ed 
clarified that it was 1.25 gigabytes because it included forum posts as well. 
Ed thought that it would be useful to have access to Chris' files as it would 
solve page crawling challenges. Raul felt that the plaintext file is separate 
from URL's and Chris confirmed that the titles which are URL's are separate 
from the plaintext.

3) Discussion moved on to forum information and the forums have been stored on 
google groups for the last 12 years with Mailman as the member that distributes 
the information to the forums. Ed felt that if he has access to the forum 
information he could work with that. Chris felt that if Ed had an account on 
the group then the information could be downloaded as well. Chris said he would 
provide Ed with links to the files and scripts to facilitate this. Posts 
earlier than 2012 may need to be accessed from other files and Ed already has 
access to pre 2012 posts. Bob wondered if Live Search required JQt and Ed 
pointed out that the search mechanism is not tied to JQt but could feed html 
results. The J Wiki Browser is definitely tied to JQt.

4) Bob is moving his focus to updating the Primer and getting the wiki ready 
for the switchover.

5) Ed would like to extend the user base a little bit, with an emphasis on Unix 
users. Ed showed the 'rabbit hole' button that takes you back into forum posts 
within context of the threads. Bob felt that curation was aided immensely by 
being able to search the whole wiki for concepts to see where information is 
stored across the wiki. Ed is wondering whether non-curators would be as 
interested and whether it will get traction. Raul felt that he is a serial 
researcher and the J wiki Browser allows him to dive deep quickly. Raul also 
mentioned that the time information could be added to the forum threads so that 
it is a little easier to track. Ed showed the issue that he had overcome with 
threads crossing the months which was a bug that Chris had known about in 
Mailman. Ed would like to add 5 more people as testers that would indicate how 
much interest there might be. Bob felt that we could target individuals who 
were more likely to give feedback. Ed and Bob will put together a list of 
people to approach. 

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is August 10th, 2023.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Raul Miller is the guest on this episode of the ArrayCast podcast and he is talking about precision in computing.

['robert therriault' via General]

Raul Miller joins the ArrayCast to discuss precision in the world of computing.

Host:  Conor Hoekstra 

Guest: Raul Miller

Panel: Adám Brudzewsky, Marshall Lochbaum, Stephen Taylor and Bob Therriault.

https://www.arraycast.com/episodes/episode59-raul-miller
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[Jgeneral] Report of J Wiki Meeting of 2023-07-27

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-07-27 ==

Present: Ed Gottsman, Dave Lambert, Raul Miller and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-27-20

1) Prior to the meeting start we solved an issue that the J Wiki Browser was 
having with Unix systems and issues with wget and curl. Then Ed showed a few 
changes that he had made to the application. One was the ability to shrink and 
expand the browser video to allow the user to focus on content or navigation 
depending on the user's choice. JSaurus https://github.com/0racle/Jsaurus was 
also added, which is a Git repository J form of the APLcart 
https://aplwiki.com/wiki/APLcart,a searchable database of useful APL phrases. 
JSaurus is in its early stages, but is prompted Ed to add a Live Search that 
will search all the code in the forum posts and select whatever primitives you 
might be interested in. Live Search also allows you moved to the context of the 
forum post. Live Search is really a proof of concept and its main use is that 
it would take a lot of the work out of curating the content for JSaurus. Adám 
Brudzewsky is the main driver behind APLcart and has offered others access to 
the code. Raul pointed out that there were things that he might do to create 
tools. Ed pointed out that there is a challenge in developing a community that 
might make submissions of use J snippets. Bob suggested using the J phrases as 
a way to seed the information and create a critical mass. Raul pointed out that 
the naming conventions of the m0 and n0 that might be difficult to categorize. 
Bob suggested maybe the newer version of the J phrases 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Phrases might be useful, but it still had some 
challenges. Ed thought that the examples in NuVoc might be candidates for 
content as well. Ed had set up a flash card training set that might be useful. 
Bob wondered if Large Language Models, such as ChatGPT, would be useful given a 
target of the J wiki, which might make the information more reliable. 

2) Bob raised the question about whether it is more important to have a lot of 
information or whether there is more use to more of a mentorship approach of 
training an apprentice how to make proper use of the information. John Seeley 
Brown wrote about 'how to be', where not only the information but the culture 
and the knowledge of the systems that you are working in. 
https://www.johnseelybrown.com/WorkingLearningLeading.pdf 

3) Bob mentioned that he was also impressed with the addition of J Playground 
in the J wiki Browser and whether that could be incorporated into JSaurus as a 
way to see live examples of the code. Ed felt that he could prioritize the 
information that Live Search provides with JSaurus at the top followed by 
NuVoc, the wiki and then the forum posts.

4) Bob talked about the Primer development and that he was using J904 using JQt 
as an IDE. Bob wondered about including direct definition for users. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Vocabulary/DirectDefinition  Ed thought that 
the old version was better because it allowed development of a verb without 
needing to decide the valence of the verb. Bob said he would discuss it with 
Eric as the original author and see what he thought about using Direct 
Definitions to define verbs in the Primer.

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is August 3rd, 2023.

--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of the J wiki meeting of July 20, 2023

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-07-20 ==

Present: Art Anger, Ed Gottsman, and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-07-20

1) Ed lead off with a demo of the current J wiki Browser 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJwj4Cz7yCk working in the JQt environment. We 
have entered the beta phase on this application and will be reaching out to add 
testers particularly for J'ers working on Unix systems as we have not had as 
much experience implementing on that platform. Contact me at bobtherriault AT 
mac DOT com if you would like to be added and we will put you on the list. We 
are planning to have a wiki page set up to provide support. A review with 
Stephen will be happening in two weeks time. 

2) There was a discussion about wrapping up the prototype wiki in the coming 
weeks https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page. Consider this an alert that 
if you have created information on the prototype you should really think about 
transferring pages across to the current wiki. This is most easily facilitated 
by the Prototype - Current wiki links in the sidebar and copying and pasting 
the mark up of the particular pages. 

3) Bob gave a quick update that progress on the Primer is slow but moving along 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Help/Primer/001Start_here.  

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is July 27th, 2023.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of J Wiki Meeting of 2023-07-13

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-07-13 ==

Present: Art Anger, Ed Gottsman, Dave Lambert and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-07-13

1) Bob reported that the J primer revamping is complete for the first section. 
Revamped pages can be identified by an index of pages below the content. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Help/Primer/001Start_here Revamping the 
dictionary page involved substituting NuVoc as the current J reference instead 
of the J dictionary. 

2) Ed told the story of his laptop's fatal interaction with pure Irish grain 
fed butter. Then there was a brief demo of the new interface of the J browser 
which is less hover based. Ed indicated that he was looking forward to hearing 
Stephen's reaction to it, as he feels it is 90% of the way to completion and 
may require a round of beta testing to finish off the rough edges involving 
interactions with different platforms. Graying out information that is not 
directly selected was suggested as a way to provide information  pertinent to 
the search.

3) Bob draws a distinction between navigation by categorization, 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Special:CategoryTree?target=Category%3AHome=categories==Special%3ACategoryTree
 which is what the original plan had been and navigation by interface, which is 
what Ed is providing. Ed pointed out that his interface relies on goo 
categorization as well, so it is more both than one or the other.  

4) Dave spoke for a bit about challenges that his Unix box was facing in 
running the browser and he will provide Ed with details as soon as he has had a 
better chance to investigate. 

5) Art thought that the new browser showed a lot of progress.

6) Bob talked about developing the Newcomers section  
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Newcomers_N a bit more before 
switching to the new format. Finishing off the J Primer and providing an easier 
introduction to the information in NuVoc. The complete information would still 
be available through the Reference subtree. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Reference_R  The Newcomers section may 
have more prominence by being near the top of the category section with Search 
and Bookmarks. Ed thought that more WD information could be positioned more 
prominently in the Developers section

7) Ed also talked about the benefits of the bookmarking section which would 
allow the user to easily customize the information by selecting links that they 
personally found most useful.  

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is July 20th, 2023.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of the J Wiki Meeting of June 8, 2023

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-06-08 ==

Present: Raul Miller and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-06-08

1) Bob started off by saying that he had decided to not move the CSS to the 
template page and Raul pointed out that he could just use the template CSS 
going forward and would not need to change the previous pages that had already 
been created.  Bob also acknowledged that it would be better to do things the 
right way, as he had already seen pages that had been assembled in the 
"easiest" way with results that needed more clean-up. He decided to take 
another look at moving the CSS from the individual page 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Help/Primer/001Start_here to the template. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Nav/primer  (Editor's note: This has been done 
subsequent to the recording of this meeting.)

2) Bob moved on to the goals that he had for his work on the wiki over the 
summer. Principally, to update the Primer to serve as a current document for 
newcomers. Complete the Newcomers category tree 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Newcomers_N so that newcomers would 
not be exposed to the current information holes because of missing pages and 
then push out the new look pages on the wiki in the fall. 

3) Raul wondered about what it would take to recreate Ed's current wiki browser 
in HTML rather than requiring the JQt framework. This would enable any user to 
be given better access to the wiki. Raul pointed out that the real challenge 
would be to incorporate the forums into HTML as they have a different format.  

4) Bob thought  that after the new look had been introduced then he would be 
taking a look at NuVoc https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/NuVoc to make the 
information more current. Raul thought that Addons would be the thing that he 
would like to focus on, https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Vocabulary/Libraries 
creating a standard page that had documentation on verbs and constants and 
examples of how to use the particular Addons. 
 
5) Raul talked about the feasibility of rewriting JQt to better support 
threading. It is big project and would involve rewriting in C++ so that you 
could have parallel threads. This is a project for the future

6) Raul showed that he had introduced sortable columns on the invisible 
modifiers page. https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Vocabulary/ModifierTrains

7) More discussion of NuVoc presentation and Raul's suggestion of having 
expandable sections. There would be sections that would be initially collapsed 
that would contain further information that would be easily accessible. This 
would allow information that is important to be quickly visible and further 
information to be accessible for those who might be interested. 

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is July 13th, 2023, 
as we take a bit of a break for the summer.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

Re: [Jgeneral] savemat_jviewmat_ j9.4 - all colors are white

['robert therriault' via General]

I just tested on my mac and the saved png displays properly.

JVERSION
Engine: j9.4.1/j64avx512/darwin
Build: commercial/2023-02-27T15:27:40/clang-14-0-0/SLEEF=1
Library: 9.4.22
Qt IDE: 2.4.1/6.2.4(6.2.4)
Platform: Darwin 64
Installer: j9.4 install
InstallPath: /users/bobtherriault/j9.4
Contact: www.jsoftware.com

Cheers, bob

> On Jun 14, 2023, at 07:49, bill lam  wrote:
> 
> I can't replicate the error on j9.5 mac. I don't have any working j9.4 jqt
> installed to test.
> Can you test with j9.5 beta?
> 
> On Wed, Jun 14, 2023 at 10:28 PM Raul Miller  wrote:
> 
>>   JVERSION
>> Engine: j9.4.2/j64avx2/windows
>> Build: commercial/2023-04-10T01:19:53/clang-15-0-7/SLEEF=1
>> Library: 9.4.22
>> Qt IDE: 2.4.1/6.2.4(6.2.4)
>> Platform: Win 64
>> Installer: j9.4 install
>> InstallPath: c:/other/j9.4
>> Contact: www.jsoftware.com
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> 
>> --
>> Raul
>> 
>> On Wed, Jun 14, 2023 at 8:43 AM chris burke  wrote:
>>> 
>>> What is your environment? It works for me on:
>>> 
>>> Engine: j9.5.0-beta3/j64avx2/linux
>>> Build: commercial/2023-05-31T14:52:14/clang-11-0-0/SLEEF=1
>>> Library: 9.5.2
>>> Qt IDE: 2.5.1/6.2.2(6.2.2)
>>> OS Ver: Linux Mint 21.1 5.15.0-69-generic
>>> Platform: Linux 64
>>> 
>>> On Wed, Jun 14, 2023 at 4:50 AM Raul Miller 
>> wrote:
 
 Oops, the first example should have used ~:/ instead of +/
 
 --
 Raul
 
 On Wed, Jun 14, 2023 at 7:35 AM Raul Miller 
>> wrote:
> 
> This works for me in j9.4:
>  viewmat +/"1 #:p:i.3 3
>  savemat_jviewmat_''
> 
> This fails for me in j9.4:
>  viewmat +/"1 #:p:i.3 3
>  savemat_jviewmat_''
> 
> (the color image is rendered as solid white when saved as a file)
> 
> Setting USEQTPNG_jpng_=: 0 does not fix the problem.
> 
> Setting USEPPPNG-jpng_=: 0 does not fix the problem.
> 
> --
> Raul
 --
 For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
>>> --
>>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
>> --
>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
>> 
> --
> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

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For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of the J wiki meeting of June 1st, 2023

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-06-01 ==

Present: Ed Gottsman, Raul Miller and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-06-01

1) Ed began with a demo of his latest iteration on the J wiki browser. We have 
put the video up on YouTube https://youtu.be/mco18CzFGTg. He began with the 
small version of the display where the webview expands as you hover it. Ed has 
moved away from the hover paradigm and now requires clicks to change the 
contents of the web view which displays the wiki page. The number of pages in a 
category is now indicated by a number instead of a line which provides the 
information in a more compact way. Ed has also expanded the space that a label 
has available when they are hovered over. That allows more information to be 
available from viewing the full title. Bob wondered if the green stripe is 
necessary and the whole column could not be scrollable. Ed pointed out that 
with smaller screens it is trickier and with a scrolling group it is hard to 
hit the target when the whole group slides. Raul suggested that when you slide 
up the group without the scrolling that is not as useful since you end up 
highlighting something that you cannot see. Ed also pointed out that the 
existing display provides a choice -  you can use the green if you are not 
concerned with the non-linear and if you want more accurate targets then use 
the non-scrolling.

2) Bob wondered if the webview could have display precedence since it is the 
target that he often uses to decide if he has found the right content. This may 
be a matter of getting the right minimum size for the page. If it is too small 
you have to go back and forth between the link display and the webview. Raul 
showed the results on his laptop screen and in that size the content of the 
screen provides enough content to discover the page that you are on. Raul 
wondered if it was possible to eliminate the sidebar on the wiki pages to 
provide more useful information. Ed pointed out that the forum pages don't have 
a sidebar and that he did not know of a way to slide the webview under the 
other content as in JQt the components do not overlap.

3) Bob showed the work that he had done on the Primer. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Help/Primer/001Start_here and the new version 
includes an index on the bottom of each page that allows the viewer to be able 
to view the titles of the other pages by hovering over the page numbers. This 
allows the viewer to access other pages with enough resistance to allow moving 
through the Primer non-linearly without encouraging it. Bob also talked about 
the method that he was using to highlight the current page and Raul suggested 
that you can use the arguments passed to a template to reduce the CSS required 
on each page. The index will always be at the bottom of the page which means 
that it will jump around depending on the length of the page. The alternative 
of having the index at the top of the page which Bob felt gives it too much 
prominence. 

4) The discussion then moved on to the Addons that Raul was organizing. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Vocabulary/Libraries He has broken the previous 
long table into sections that expand according their categories. He was also 
able to include some 'unofficial' Addons that had not yet been put into the 
Package Manager at the bottom of the page. His page is generated from the names 
in the manifest for the Addons repository. Raul feels that the GitHub folder 
should be added as an identifier to these names as it is necessary to access 
the Addon repository. There are Addons that do not have content so that over 
time some content may need to be provided. Raul said that many of the scripts 
have comments that would provide the start of the content that needs to be 
provided. Raul has created a script that builds the Addon display in the talk 
area of the Addons page where it can be uploaded. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/File:Addon-summary.txt  Henry has provided an 
example of excellent documentation on Dissect 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Vocabulary/Dissect

5) We reviewed Henry's Share My Screen initiative and found it to be an 
excellent resource for encouraging developers and intermediate J programmers. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/ShareMyScreen Ed mentioned that he feels that 
there is a lack of good intermediate J code and this looks like excellent work 
because it breaks down the process line by line and explains the way that he 
approaches the solutions. 

6) Ed wondered about the location of the 50 Shades of J. Raul pointed out that 
it was in its own category 50 Shades of J R.3.6. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:50_Shades_of_J_R.3.6 Bob said that it 
had only been included in reference so far because only the reference had been 
categorized even in a rudimentary fashion. There may be many opportunities to 
attach the 50 

[Jgeneral] Report of the J Wiki Meeting of May 25, 2023

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-05-25 ==

Present: Ed Gottsman, Raul Miller and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-05-18

1) Ed started the meeting off with a demonstration of his newest iteration of 
the J wiki browser. Ed has moved away from his hover approach for content 
navigation. Structural navigation which is the navigation that travels across 
the structure of the wiki remains responsive to the hovering. To change the 
webview when hovering over content, you now have to click. This removes the 
issue of webviews changing as you move across content pages. Stephen Therriault 
had mentioned that a top ranking might be good for search results, but Ed felt 
that this would not be available, as there were results coming from a number of 
different sources and it would be difficult to resolve conflicts. Raul wondered 
what the issues were with the hover based approach. Ed felt that Stephen had 
made the point that an expert may be able to use the interface, but that a 
novice would struggle without direction. Ed also felt that hover creates 
changes that are not easily reversible.

2) Bob thought that there should be consistency between the structural 
navigation. At the moment, some of the structural areas do require clicking. 
Blue links are content pages and are easily identifiable as clickable. The 
green columns would be structural with scrollability. The grey stripes indicate 
horizontal space saving or column compression. They allow a safe space to move 
up and down columns without collapsing the column. Bob wondered if the grey 
stripe was necessary and Ed pointed out that it was because otherwise the user 
would not know why the behaviour changes with small movements. Rauls suggested 
that a reverse of having the centre strip be white with the edges being shade 
to indicate active areas for column compression. This is clearly an area that 
requires more thought and Ed is diligently working his way through the process 
and feels that he has enough feedback to work through the next week. 

3) Bob showed the work that he had done on the Primer. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Help/Primer/001Start_here The new version has 
simplified the look and the navigation is more focussed on the Primer itself 
than the previous version. https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Help/Primer/093_Fork 
Bob planned to use J9.4 as the example version because the error messages are 
much clearer. Bob also wanted to focus on direct definition because that seems 
a bit nicer to introduce explicit definitions than using the n : m form.

4) Raul wondered if there might be some type of an index available. Bob thought 
that he would supply an index at the check points at the end of each section. 
Raul suggested that the Help/Primer category might be useful to link back to 
the Index page. This requires extra clicks to see the index page. Ed suggested 
a vertical stripe of links to the different pages would allow the page to 
always have access to the other pages. Bob wondered if the Sidebar might be 
able to be used for this, but Ed felt that the Sidebar should be consistent for 
the user.

5) Bob suggested that the JQt IDE be used in the Primer for consistency and 
that many of the things that the Primer show are easily shown with JQt. An 
example is the GUI pages which currently are based on J602 interfaces. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Help/Primer/102_GUI_part_2 The plan would be to 
use the Primer as a way to guide newcomers towards being developers, since many 
of the packages such as plot are included in the Primer. It may be possible to 
tease learners with what is possible. Ed felt that the Primer then becomes a 
good place to put links that will direct the user to more learning and may be 
an interface to the wiki that benefits newcomers.   

6) Bob suggested that there might be some reduction to the Sidebar that were no 
longer required, such as the link to the prototype wiki. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/MediaWiki:Sidebar

7) Ed wondered if there were any benefit to having J on the web integrated with 
the wiki. Raul explained that there are two ways of having J on the web: one 
was the playground https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:J_Playground_N.1 
which is driven from each user's browser through WASM or JHS which is HTML and 
driven from the J engine that the user has downloaded. Ed wondered if the 
Primer could be made into a lab. Bob felt that it could, although some pages 
would need to be broken up due to length. Bob also mentioned that the Primer 
currently talks about the Vocabulary from the original dictionary and that he 
is planning to use NuVoc as the reference. There was then a discussion of the 
Vocabulary and NuVoc and the strengths and weaknesses of each until we wrapped 
up the meeting. 

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development

If 

Re: [Jgeneral] Crash in m"n WAS: How to perform operation on every 3rd value in a vector

['robert therriault' via General]

No problem on Mac. It recognizes the value error

list=:_1 4 6 8 3 5 8 _1 7 4
   abc`0:`*: "0 list NB. abc being undefined
|value error: abc
|   abc`0:`*:"0 list
   JVERSION
Engine: j9.4.1/j64avx512/darwin
Build: commercial/2023-02-27T15:27:40/clang-14-0-0/SLEEF=1
Library: 9.4.22
Qt IDE: 2.4.1/6.2.4(6.2.4)
Platform: Darwin 64
Installer: j9.4 install
InstallPath: /users/bobtherriault/j9.4
Contact: www.jsoftware.com

Cheers, bob

> On May 29, 2023, at 12:36, Richard Donovan  wrote:
> 
> iPad :
> 
> 
>   list=:_1 4 6 8 3 5 8 _1 7 4
>   abc`0:`*: "0 list NB. abc being undefined
> |value error: abc
> |   abc`0:`*:"0 list
>   JVERSION
> Engine: j903/j64/iOS
> beta-k: GPL3/2023-04-16T23:21:00
> Platform: iOS/iPadOS
> Version: 903.2 57
> Installer: App Store
> Contact: http://www.jsoftware.com/
> 
> 
>> On 29 May 2023, at 20:18, Henry Rich  wrote:
>> 
>> I am running 9.5 beta (which has not changed in this area), and I get value 
>> error (no crash).  Windows 11.
>> 
>> Can anyone reproduce this?
>> 
>> Henry Rich
>> 
>>> On 5/29/2023 2:23 PM, Gilles Kirouac wrote:
>>> list=:_1 4 6 8 3 5 8 _1 7 4
>>>   abc`0:`*: "0 listNB. abc being undefined
>>> 
>>> crashed jc9.4.
>> 
>> --
>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
> --
> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of the J Wiki Meeting of 2023-05-18

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-05-18 ==

Present: John Baker, Ed Gottsman, Dave Lambert and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-05-18

1) Ed did not have an update on the J wiki as he is still reviewing the session 
that Bob had with Stephen Therriault. Ed said he was looking forward to having 
a session with Stephen in the future, as Ed feels that Stephen has reservations 
that he would like to explore in search of consensus on the J wiki viewer.

2) The second item was the rebranding of J as the J programming language. John 
felt that there are not that many primary sources of J information, but that 
using the term J Programming Language might seem easier for Google searches. Ed 
wondered what the abbreviation might be and felt that the folks at the Jet 
Propulsion Laboratory might have issues with that. Ed asked what the motivation 
for the discussion was. It was agreed that there are not that many sources of 
information about J, although many people wish that there were more. Dave 
mentioned that using site:jsoftware.com in a Google search was one way to limit 
the results of hits and the wiki is also a good source of information. Ed said 
that Stack Overflow has a   tag that is used. John mentioned that it might 
be a good idea to have a wiki page that lists GitHub repos that have J. Bob 
added that the new J Wiki Browser has a Bookmark button that allows you to add 
and remove bookmarks of useful pages. 

3) A further discussion of using "jios' for the iOS applicatons. This was 
suggested by Ian Clark as Apple had pushed back on renaming the versions by 
their version numbers. As it is, J701 is separate from J903, but going forward 
the "jios" would be used for the umbrella name of the J903 versions. There was 
some discussion of Ian building a subset of J using Swift, as an investigation 
into the interface. Ed suggested that there would be howls of protest over 
which primitives had been selected if it were ever released. This lead to a 
discussion about whether the number of primitives was an impediment to learning 
the language. Generally it was felt that there are many languages that are much 
larger and that the number of primitives should not be an issue. John wondered 
whether the definition of a variable name in J might include unicode. Consensus 
was that there would not be any problems with using "jios" as the application 
name.  

4) As an extra item, John asked about the new modular arithmetic that had been 
added. He felt it was useful for using clocks and other cyclical calculations 
and had really speeded up with addition of the .gmp extended functionality. 
Dave found it useful for Project Euler questions. 

5) Fold was discussed as an operator that is written in J so was a bit slower 
than what it would be if it were written in C. Fold was useful for a number of 
reasons, not the least that it allows J to mirror other languages which have 
different versions of Fold. J seems to have all the options covered.  

6) John asked about the new additions to the Sequential Machine. All agreed 
that it can be difficult to program, but once programmed is quite useful. The 
new additions may allow it to apply to a wider number of applications. Dave 
mentioned that he had considered some type of an interface to program the state 
machines.  

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is May 25th, 2023.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of the J Wiki Meeting of May 11, 2023

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-05-11 ==

Present: Ed Gottsman, Dave Lambert , Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-05-11

1) The began with Raul sharing an animation of a rotating F that he ran through 
the J Playground. tinyurl.com/rotatingF This was in response to Ed asking about 
ways that the J wiki viewer might by converted to a browser based environment. 
Raul explained that there was three lines of J in the script, about 2/3 of the 
code was shader instructions and 1/3 was JavaScript. Ed said he is not a big 
fan of JavaScript but was more comfortable with the shaders. For more details 
it would be best to reference the transcript. Bob raised the point that JHS 
might be an option as well. Raul pointed out that JHS requires J to be 
downloaded and the J Playground is browser based. Both use JavaScript syntax to 
interact with the DOM.

2) Raul then explained that this video involved ray marching as a more 
efficient way to create the animation. Again, details can be found in the 
transcript. Raul provided the link to https://www.shadertoy.com/ where there 
are many examples of ray marching. Raul mentioned that we might require more 
documentation about how the J Playground interacts with the DOM as Ed tries to 
implement the J Wiki Visualization Tool in the browser.Bob said that he would 
contact Joe Bogner to find out how available he might be to help out. Ed would 
be copied as well. 

3) Bob was unable to meet with Stephen yet, but was planning to go over the 
interface with him next week. Ed said that he was getting good feedback from 
the Aaron Ash of the NYCJUG meeting and was still looking forward to include 
more people in the test. Ed wondered what the best way to distribute was and it 
was suggested that Chris Burke be contacted to see whether this would be the 
best strategy. Bob said that he would and copy Ed on that as well.  

4) Bob talked to Eric about updating the Primer 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Primer_R.6.3  and got a positive 
response. The titles of the pages have been updated so that the pages are 
presented in the correct order. Bob felt that he might look at incorporating 
some of the advantages of the wiki such as hyper links to provide a richer 
experience for newcomers. The structure of the Primer might be focussed on 
transitioning beginners to more advanced applications. The Primer currently 
shows Plot and developing GUI's (which is out of date). There may be more 
examples added that might encourage application development. Ed suggested that 
many current users of J are focussed on Math and he felt that there is more use 
as a general purpose language for application development. Bob felt that the 
language has that potential, but might require more instruction and libraries 
to be able to attract developers. 

5) Bob showed off the work that Henry Rich has been doing with the Share My 
Screen section https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/ShareMyScreen which explains 
Advent of Code solutions and that this is aimed more at the advanced programmer 
or at least a programmer who is familiar with the language. This type of 
content is welcomed and would be very useful in providing content to the 
Advanced (formerly Developers) section of the wiki. 

6) Bob looked for direction on the way that the Primer should be developed. Bob 
felt that he wanted to make more use of visuals and diagrams in the way that 
Roger Stokes' "Learning J". 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Learning_J_R.6.2  It would take into 
account the audience and would not be overly cute, but more functional in the 
way that the diagrams could explain concepts.

7) Dave wondered whether there might be more primitives to support the general 
use of J beyond the math primitives. Bob felt that with so many existing 
primitives that more libraries would be required to provide the resources. Ed 
wondered whether the size of the J languages was one of the challenges that it 
faces. Bob felt that the Primer handles this by introducing the primitives in a 
way that gradually builds from simple to more complex primitive and uses the 
functionality as a motivator for the increasing complexity. 

8) A short discussion about how J's primitives do not alway suggest the action 
and so those unfamiliar with the primitives have to learn their uses before 
they feel comfortable with the language. Dave mentioned the inflections of dots 
and colons does help. Bob pointed out that this is true, but recognizing that 
part of the language still has to be learned. 


For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is May 18th, 2023.

[Jgeneral] Report of J Wiki Meeting 2023-05-04

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-05-04 ==

Present: Ed Gottsman, Devon McCormick, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-05-04

1) Since Ed has got to a point of polishing up the beta, he decided to do a 
recap of the J Wiki Visualization Tool functionality. Video of this demo is 
available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjNDi05Wy20 and it provides a good 
introduction to the application if you have not already watched it.  

2) Devon wondered if the entire database needed to be sent for debugging 
information. Ed replied that the log includes some environmental information 
and does not require users to split out the information of the database. 

3) Bob revisited the Developers category and now feels that Ed and Devon's 
suggestion of renaming to Advanced and including information such as Add-ons, 
Socket programming  and others as they are developed. Ed wondered if there 
could be a slush pile category that would be information that had not been 
curated. Bob thought that the Archived category would fit this and of course 
search would traverse this information and make it available to users. 

4) In the Newcomers area, Bob felt that if the Primer were updated to the 
current version of J and that the book and lab reference was organized for 
easier access. It is more important that Newcomers not be exposed to the 
evolving wiki, since they are expecting structure. When the Newcomers is 
cleaned up a bit then we should be ready to move ahead with the final part of 
the transition with the understanding that it will be a work in progress. 

5) Devon wondered if the J Wiki Visualization Tool could be used as an example 
of programming. Ed felt that he might not be used as a example since he was not 
a professional J programmer. Devon pointed out that there were not many of 
those and then referred to the Monument documentation which he said did not 
look like it had been developed by professional J programmers. Devon then 
talked about Jose Mario Quintana's style which was highly tacitified and would 
be intimidating to most J programmers.

6) Ed wondered how testing should be approached for a GUI application. Devon 
wondered if the log could be played back as he had used that technique to 
capture GUI interaction. Ed pointed out that although there is html output that 
could be tested, that most of the output is graphics. Bob talked about using 
assert and 5!:5 to get a linear representation that matches to the programs 
output. Devon mentioned that Hummingbird 
https://github.com/hummingbird-project/hummingbird  might be used for playing 
back logs. Bob wondered if the timing of feedback might indicate user 
experience is degrading. Ed is looking for a way to be able flag user 
experience before exposing the users to the interface. Devon felt that this is 
a difficult problem. Ed said that it was something that was pretty much solved 
for the web, but testing graphical output is harder. Recently Ed noticed that 
the text is less crisp and this would be something that he hoped would be 
caught by these tests.

7) Ed proposed that it might be time to expand the test user group. Devon 
mentioned that Ed is presenting at the May 9th NYCJUG 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/NYCJUG/2023-05-09 and that there may be 
candidates there. 

8) Devon wondered if it was possible to webify the J Wiki Visualization Tool 
and Ed said that he had wondered about that as well. His specific question is 
whether there is an API to allow the J interface to work with the DOM and the 
canvas. Bob mentioned the J Playground, based on a WASM or JHS which is the IDE 
that is web based. Ed expressed the feeling that there is a lot of potential 
for J beyond mathematical programming. Bob mentioned the work that Michal 
Wallace has done with his scripted videos. https://github.com/tangentstorm/ 


For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is May 11th, 2023.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of J Wiki Meeting of April 27, 2023

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-04-27 ==

Present: Ed Gottsman, Devon McCormick, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-04-27

1) We started off with Ed's latest demo of the new J wiki browser. Video of 
this demo is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwjJQkNnayY . This 
version includes tags, bookmarks and  searches of both the forums and the wiki. 
Ed has incorporated a click to lock the webview for 3 seconds to avoid 
inadvertent hovering changes to the webview. 

2) We then turned to discussing the forum interface in depth. This is included 
in the demo video above. Devon suggested putting the year and month at the top 
of the forum threads. Ed showed the interface that creates gaps between the 
months to accommodate the left to right movement from year to thread without 
hitting a different month on the way. This leads to the gap in the month 
dancing as you move up and down the years which Devon felt that he could get 
used to. Bob suggested that staying with vertical years and months with the 
month extending below the selected year. This makes use of the non responsive 
vertical space to avoid the hovering issue. This would involve a long list of 
year month combos, which Ed thought would be worth investigating, although 
there would be a challenge of being able to track such a long list with mouse 
movements. Bob wondered about separating the dates column into a single 
isigraph and Ed suggested that there was not a great benefit to that and it 
would add complexity to the forum navigation independent. 

3) Bob mentioned that he had a call out to his son Stephen to take a second 
look at the design and Ed said that he was looking forward to that feedback. 
Devon wondered about how deeply the viewer was tied to the wiki structure. Ed 
said that to use the viewer with a different website you would need a crawler 
and a database that reflected the structure. Devon wondered about it being 
useful for a photo library and Ed said that was an interesting possibility, but 
both agreed that the focus would remain on the current J wiki browser. 

4) Ed wondered about how to update the database in a way that would not be a 
problem for traffic. Raul was going to look into ways that would minimize the 
traffic. Raul felt that it might be done as an add-on using the manifest number 
as an update signal. Ed had reservations about using the add-on because the 
webview interactivity may not work for any version of J and so we would need to 
just use selected binaries for webview to work. Raul said that there were ways 
to avoid updates using Package Manager for add-ons. This was a discussion that 
may be tabled until the jQt update comes through. 

5) The meeting continued with showing some of the things that he had learned 
about moving pages that create redirections. This allowed Bob to move J for C 
Programmers pages to new positions that take into account the  chapter numbers, 
as this allows the book to display in the wiki with chapters in the correct 
order. https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:JforC_R.6.1 This was also done 
with 50 Shades of J. Bob had put the old pages on the Delete page before he 
realized that moving would have done the redirection. Pages with multiple 
redirection can be cleaned up by hopping directly to final destination. This 
can also be done for categories and would allow easier clean up of category 
trees if changes to categories are required.

6) Bob suggested that he was thinking of eliminating the Developer part of the 
category tree https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Developers_D until those 
pages are further developed. This would allow more focus on the Newcomers pages 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Newcomers_N to make them more accurate 
and this might include the J Primer which is a great resource, but probably 
could use an update. It was suggested that the original authors should be 
consulted to work in collaboration with the wiki team. The Developer branch has 
not really been explored and it is not clear to Bob what the audience is in the 
developer community. Bob feels that Newcomers could be revamped fairly quickly, 
that the Reference category would remain a work in progress. Ed thought that it 
would be a shame to move the Developers out and maybe the way is to put an 
warning that it might not be up to date. Ed felt that it might be a 
communications problem and that renaming it might be a better approach, maybe 
call it Advanced or some other name. Bob thought the warning could be included 
in the content of the category page. Bob felt that Reference would have all of 
the information, though is an advantage to having a narrower view of particular 
topics that might be helpful. Raul wondered whether the breakdown might be 
specialized interests such as graphics, number theory, add-ons etc. Bob felt 
that 

[Jgeneral] A new episode of The ArrayCast podcast is out

['robert therriault' via General]

On this episode of ArrayCast we take a deep look at the Scan and Fold operators 
in k, q, BQN, J and other array languages.

Host: Conor Hoekstra

Panel:  Marshall Lochbaum, Richard Park, Stephen Taylor and Bob Therriault.

https://www.arraycast.com/episodes/episode52-fold-and-scan
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of the J Wiki Meeting of April 20, 2023

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Ed Gottsman, Devon McCormick, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-04-20

1) We started off with Ed's seventh demo of the new J wiki browser. Ed 
mentioned that Bob had created a prototype that allowed child controls to 
change their visibility and size which makes the appearance of the browser more 
flexible to respond to Search requirements and NuVoc screen space. Ed had also 
created the an animation of the centre pane sliding over the table of contents. 
Raul found that this was a bit distracting and Ed feels that it is probably not 
worth the distraction for what the gains are. Bob wondered if fading colour 
might allow the background to be less distracting. Ed also reduced the font 
size, as had been advised by Stephen Therriault, and taken the palette of 
NuVoc. Ed chose not to use the palette of the wiki and Bob agreed that there 
should be a distinction between the viewer and the web pages. Ed suggested that 
it was an open question. 

2) There was some discussion about the hierarchy of the wiki structure and how 
it is represented by indentation in the table of contents. Ed raised the 
question about whether there was a different way of organizing the wiki based 
on popularity of the pages as opposed to the wiki structure that emerged as it 
grew. Bob felt that the table of contents does not have to be an either or and 
that two category trees could be created. The issue with that would be that we 
would be dividing our resources for indexing. Popularity might be a 
particularly difficult indexing challenge as it might have more evolution over 
time. Other options would be to have particular interests reflected in the 
table of contents such as mathematician, engineer, computer science etc. 

3) Ed has found that search has been a challenge because the search field below 
tends to hide information as the cursor moves over other pages. Bob suggested 
that the search bar might be put above, but that would require that Ed split 
the table of contents and the centre pane into separate isigraphs. Devon 
wondered if the table of contents could be made into a tab to get it out of the 
way. 

4) Ed discussed making the font size smaller, since the larger the font, the 
less whitespace is available. Stephen had also mentioned that there was a lot 
of information on the screen and felt that reducing the font size while 
retaining the target size allows quicker scanning while maintaining same target 
size. Ed tried out a smaller font live and it seemed to address some of the 
issues.

5) Ed talked about issues that he had with the search results being displayed 
in the table of contents. Raul wonder if using colour to separate the search 
terms from the results. Bob wondered if there was an opportunity to put the 
results in the centre pane under the different locations. This was similar to 
earlier versions, but there were issues with the number of search results 
fitting into the centre pane.

6) Raul showed an issue that he has seen with Forums and the way that his dates 
displayed. There seems to be an issue with interference on the forum dates. 
Also, some of the search results are not showing up and Ed thinks that it might 
be an http https issue. It may be an issue with the ampersands not being 
recognized properly by the browser. Ed's feeling is that he will need to keep 
focus on the smaller displays because they seem to be the source of many of the 
issues that have shown up. Ed is exploring the option of shrinking the browser 
window until you want to display it and then having the window expand when the 
mouse wheel event happens on the webview. This will be solved when webview can 
view mouse move events, which is apparently coming in the next iteration of 
jQt. Mouse events are sampled so that it is hard to know exact position of the 
mouse. Bob wonders if there is a setting that we are missing on the webview 
window that allows us to use scroll bar.

7) Ed has added a black border that will lock the screen for 3 seconds while 
you move across the screen and that seems to be a good interim fix for the 
inadvertent hover. Raul wondered about whether there is a way to convey the 
structure of the program, so that he might be able to better trouble shoot some 
of the issues that he has found. 

8) Bob mentioned again the popularity index to structure the tree and that it 
should be considered for a while before any commitment. Ed agrees that there is 
work that will always be done in curation. Bob suggests that NuVoc might 
provide a portal into the wiki information with links to J Playground for 
examples. This could be provided through the category tree with links to the 
primitives. 

9) Bob also noted that Wiki Hints has moved over to the side bar as it is more 
maintenance than it is information about the J language. 

[Jgeneral] Report of the J Wiki Meeting of April 13, 2023

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Ed Gottsman, Devon McCormick, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-04-13

1) We started off with Ed's sixth demo of the new J wiki browser. As much of 
this is visual the video can be watched here. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo7j1Gyl2og Ed has added an area for tags which 
he suggests are the best representation of the user defined categories. He has 
grouped these categories into alphabetical groups which have a more manageable 
size which can be further probed 

2) The next topic was the way to represent forums. There was a discussion 
between Bob and Ed about the way that the interface for the forums could be 
organized to allow quick access through years to months to threads and then to 
posts. Raul suggested that a click and hold interaction that would freeze 
interaction until you release in the new position. This would be used to reduce 
unwanted hover selection. Ed wishes to explore the hover mode as far as 
possible because it encourages information exploration. 

3) Ed felt that there are two use cases for the forums. One is to find the most 
recent posts and that case is supported well. The second case is browsing 
through threads the way that you would browse through a magazine. Ed wonders if 
there is another use case. Raul suggests that the structure of the forum does 
not lend itself to use cases beyond those two. Bob relayed that his son, 
Stephen, who has education in UX and design, felt that the search and the speed 
of access was the most powerful aspect of the interface. Ed pointed out that 
not all posts show up in the search, although they do if browsed in the thread. 
ED confesses that he has found that the current interface allows him to browse 
the threads in a way that is quite pleasant.

4) Bob suggested using the entering of the labels to restart the timer, as it 
seems to pick up entering more quickly than leaving a label. Ed suggested that 
that is done with a quarter second lag which could be tuned. The right side of 
the screen does not have a lag, but the web based right side which has a lag 
anyway has a quarter second lag. Raul suggested an accordion of the months 
below the years. That may be too many to represent visually, since it would be 
a couple of hundred entries. Raul further suggested an accordion for the years 
as well as the months with a zoom slider similar to the vertical table of 
contents. Ed's solution of opening a gap in the months below the years

5) Ed asked if there could be some design support provided, as his expertise is 
in programming and not design. Bob said he could get in touch with Stephen to 
get some support. Ed said he was looking for information on colour palette. 

6) Ed is currently looking for a way to partition the 'public' wiki information 
from information such as bookmarks that might be more 'personal'. Ed is 
considering whether this could be done on one database or if it requires two. 
Is the current protocol to ask permission before writing to a file? Bob felt 
that as long as you are writing to the temp file and it is information that the 
user generates, such as bookmarks, that should not be a problem that the user 
is storing their information in their own file. Raul wondered about how much we 
could know about the user's machine and that could lead to problems. Also that 
the files be managed in one folder, possibly titled 'J wiki browser', that has 
the files that the user would know not to remove that folder. Ed prefers having 
one database file to retrieve debugging information more easily. Raul suggested 
writing 'personal' information to a J file, clobbering the database and then 
read the 'personal' information back into the database to repopulate the 
'private' information.


For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is April 20th, 2023.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of J wiki Meeting for April 06, 2023

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-04-06 ==

Present: Ed Gottsman, Dave Lambert, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-04-06

1) We started off with Ed's fifth demo of the new J wiki browser. The challenge 
is to display a category tree of over 150 categories. Sub-categories are 
displayed with pages when possible, but when there are too many categories the 
display is broken into sub-pages. Also a timing constraint so that pages are 
only selected when they are hovered over for more than 1.5 seconds. Ed is 
beginning to think about what it would take to make a stand-alone version. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhhGi8gLfvw

2) We talked for a bit about SQLite as a database. Ed was thinking about 
dropping it but has found it is very useful for debugging and fits the purpose 
well. Raul asked whether Jd had been considered. Ed said he could look at it, 
but would need to be convinced that it would be the right move. Bob thought 
that Jd would work and that there might be advantage as a showcase and the 
ability to write in J, but we should not let that get in the way of something 
that is working in SQLite.

3) Ed mentioned that he was picking up extra categories that are not part of 
the category tree in total over 750 categories and Ed wondered about including 
this many categories in the interface. Raul mentioned that it was really a tag 
cloud and Ed felt that might be a better way to display it, possibly with a 
threshold for display that might be user controlled. Ed suggested the tag cloud 
node could be another node in the category tree.

4) Bob showed some categorizations that he had done that tested the limits of 
categories, by making the category tree into a directed graph that has loops 
and loops within loops. This would have some  functionality to develop trees 
that were related to a specific topic and these trees or portions of them could 
be attached to the category tree. It was generally decided that this would not 
be a good way to do this because loops can create user fatigue as they can 
create large, disorganized cognitive loops that confuse the user. We should be 
disciplined with the way we structure the wiki, but we can be more liberal with 
the way that we attach pages to the trees.

5) There was a discussion about a maintenance category in the wiki and whether 
that would be an issue with trying to tag pages with FixMe or Delete tags. 
Currently we are doing this to some extent by having a link on the main page to 
the wiki information. The link could also be put in the side bar so that it 
would be available on every page and this is probably a good direction to go 
with the Wiki W category on the main tree.

6) Ed explained that his wiki browser traverses the category breadth first 
search and if it sees the category a second time it will display it, but not 
its children. This makes the content on the category page important because it 
could contain links to child categories for users in addition to the structure 
of the tree. It also might just be series of links to the different user 
created categories that would 'air gap' the loops that could be created if they 
had been directly attached to the main category tree. User created category 
trees have their own categories and then link back to the pages freely. A node 
on the main category tree could be added for user defined category trees so 
that they can be found.

7) Bob mentioned a meeting that he had with Tom McGuire who has created many 
categories in the prototype wiki and he is working on the categorization of 
Essays and this is invaluable because it gives a second pair of eyes on the 
choices that had been made. It would also be a good idea to develop a list of 
categories so that we can guide people into more consistent categorization.

8) A discussion of adding a saved documents node in the table of contents so 
that you could curate pages that you found particularly useful. 

9) A detailed discussion about tracking mouse movements. When the mouse moves 
off of the middle pane there is not a way to know the mouse has left an area 
and so the timer keeps running and the page will be displayed. Dave suggested 
that you might be able to track mouse position and Raul wondered if there is a 
focus loss event that could be tracked. Ed will do more investigation into this 
to see what events are being passed through the web view.

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is April 13th, 2023.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of J Wiki Meeting of March 30, 2023

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-03-30 ==

Present: Ed Gottsman, Dave Lambert, Devon McCormick, Raul Miller, and Bob 
Therriault

Full transcripts of this meeting are now available on the its wiki page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Report_of_Meeting_2023-03-30

1) We started off with Ed's fourth demo of the new J wiki browser. This version 
includes search of forum posts and is drawing its information from the site 
directly, not from a cached version. Devon suggested a good intro explanation 
of the interface would help. Ed said that his goal was to make the interface so 
obvious that the introduction could be kept minimal. Ed reiterated that all of 
the interaction wth some exception is based on hovering to minimize friction 
for the user. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVtyjobPleA 

2) Discussion whether there would be an issue with having a 100Mb cache to feed 
the system instead of live. Dave asked how often. Ed noted that there was not 
really a difference in speed of access between cache and internet, except in 
searches. Cache search time is milliseconds, internet search is about 2 seconds 
depending on connection. Bob wondered if having pages displayed on hover would 
create a few more orders of magnitude traffic on the site for each user. Raul 
did not think that the load would be volume of requests because text is being 
sent and that would be small compared to a video feed. Bob suggested that 
hovering might run from cache, but clicking on the page will go to the site and 
provide full interactivity including editing of a page for logged in users. Ed 
said for Mac's he has put in a double click that will load a page in a third 
party browser window, he has not found how to make it cross platform yet. Bob 
pointed out that a downloaded cache also provides access without internet 
connection. Ed suggested we see if there is an impact before we decide. Devon 
agreed "Don't optimize too soon".

3) Bob reflected that this browser has made access so quick that it has changed 
the way that he has looked at the wiki. Such quick access has changed the way 
that Bob has looked at categories. In the past the category pages provided 
content that would provide a context for the pages, 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Reference_R but such quick access 
means that the category content is less important. Raul pointed out that if you 
are not using Ed's wiki browser you would still need  the content on the page. 
Bob said that category content might be generated by ChatGPT as it does a 
decent job of summarizing when reviewed for accuracy. The categories do become 
more important because the structure they provide is the basis of the J wiki 
browser. The J wiki browser is based in jQt, but there is nothing that keeps it 
from being browser based other than having the expertise to develop it. Not all 
web developers are that focussed on fast interaction, but game developers may 
be a direction to go. Having had a chance to play with the interface, Bob asked 
when this might be available to the J wiki group and Ed suggested a week or two.

4) Raul suggested that the interface should still show when something is 
clickable. Ed said with hovering everything is clickable, but clicking is not 
necessary. Raul suggested a click would hold the position of the selection box, 
but the text would change colour to blue when you hover over it, indicating it 
can be clicked. Bob suggested that the clicking of the box would also set the 
history of the web view so you could access the clicked box. Bob wondered if 
this would load pages that were touched in transit would show up as well. Bob 
wondered if it was possible to set a time limit for the page so that transit 
pages would not be picked up and put on the display list. 

5) Dave asked a question about using the graphic animation on a raspberry pi 
for an art installation. Not wiki related, but if you are interested in this 
you might check the transcript.


For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is April 6th, 2023.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Henry Rich talks about the Fold conjunction on this episode of the ArrayCast podcast

['robert therriault' via General]

Henry Rich returns to talk about Fold and other conjunctions that facilitate 
functional programming. If you want to know more about Fold and why you should 
be using it, you should listen to this episode.

Host: Conor Hoekstra

Panel:  Marshall Lochbaum, Adám Brudzewsky, and Bob Therriault.

https://www.arraycast.com/episodes/episode50-fold
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of J wiki meeting of March 23, 2023

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-03-23 ==

Present: Ed Gottsman, Dave Lambert, Devon McCormick, Raul Miller, and Bob 
Therriault

1) Ed led off the meeting with a demo of the most recent iteration of the J 
Wiki browser that he has developed in jQt. This one includes forum content, 
which will eventually lead to searchable forum posts with quick access hovering 
similar to the J wiki access. Worth a look to see the full functionality. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPmRWEyk8gs 

2) Next up was Devon McCormick showing some of the categorization he had done 
based on his https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/NYCJUG/2021-01-12 categorization. 
He had questions about how specific categories should be and whether there 
should be a style guide for terms such as 'Array Thinking' or 'ArrayThinking' 
or 'Array-thinking'. Devon was concerned about being too specific with his 
choice of categories. Bob felt that user assigned categories are valuable 
because they could later be incorporated into the category tree categories. In 
the meantime, user defined categories would be useful to binding together pages 
that share different aspects of a category. Raul felt that at some point in the 
future we might need to provide support for categories so that users might be 
given choices in categories in addition to developing their own to encourage 
some aggregation. Bob also mentioned that categories can be changed and migrate 
the linked pages to create new category pages. There is more work, but you do 
not lose initial categorization even if categories are changed. Devon has also 
created instant links to his NYCJUG meetings 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/NYCJUG#2022

3) Ed opened a discussion about searching the forums using the grid structure 
that he had developed. Bob felt that it would work, Ed was open to exploring 
other options. Ed asked about cached versus live access on his browser tool -– 
whether there is a preference to being able to edit live pages or whether 
cached pages would suffice. Bob felt that he could do editing on a live browser 
and would not need live pages. 

4) Ed wondered about whether NYCJUG could be further categorized. This could be 
done by year, but the topics such as 'Beginners Regatta' might not be useful 
because they occur in every meeting. The user contributed categories are 
opportunities to 'pave cow paths' so that the community can develop direction 
for the formation of the more formal category tree structure. Raul mentioned 
that the special page for Needed Categories that identified categories that 
show up on pages, but have not had a page created yet.  
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Special:WantedCategories

5) Bob gave a quick demo of his 'Contributing to the J Wiki' page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Contibuting_to_the_J_Wiki_W.2 Feedback 
was that examples should be expanded. Bob wondered about whether there should 
be a longer table of contents or click to a new page. A compelling case was 
made to have a longer table of contents for quicker access. Bob thought that a 
collapsible table of contents might be possible, but Ed pointed out that 
scrolling is a lot quicker than clicking and opening hidden information. 
Another option would be to widen the page by using additional levels of 
headings. This seemed like the best approach to minimize the amount of 
scrolling.

6) Ed wondered if videos might be an approach. Bob thought that the length of 
videos meant that many would not sit for two minutes to find information that 
might be a line of text. The approach might be to minimize the length of 
videos, so that a 30 second video specific to the skills would be useful. Video 
without voice-over might be appropriate. Bob said that he had done svg 
animations that are tiny to convey ideas. They may be revisited, as they are 
small and fit the web format of the wiki.


For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development
If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is March 30th, 2023.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of J Wiki Meeting of March 16th, 2023

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-03-16 ==

Present: Art Anger, Ed Gottsman, Dave Lambert, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

1) Ed started things off with a presentation his revamped wiki interface, which 
includes faster access to the web pages and a more economical approach to 
displaying the map. Well worth watching this video, both for seeing what may be 
possible and the way Ed has incorporated earlier suggestions into his 
prototyping process.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-wvZG7uHC8

2) Following the presentation Ed asked what the biggest challenges facing the 
wiki were and where is the work currently required. Bob said that creating the 
content in the category trees and being a bit more discerning on the categories 
so that they are more balanced are the two areas that are currently labour 
intensive. Ed wondered if the trees really needed to be balanced. Bob's concern 
was in very unbalanced trees that small categories might flood the search space 
and would make searching less efficient. Categorization would need to be a 
focus going forward. 

3) Ed was still looking for something to do, so Bob asked if there might be a 
version of his prototype that we could begin working with. Ed said that the 
current version is not ready to used as a tool in general, but Bob was thinking 
more of refining the prototype through use as it progresses toward general use. 

4) The current prototype is running under jQt and Bob wondered whether there 
was a way to incorporate his editing process into the search page. Ed thought 
the more productive approach would be to have the prototype work along side a 
browser window. The prototype would allow access and then cutting and pasting 
into a wiki page that is being edited in the browser.

5) Bob wondered if it were possible to have users create their own categories. 
Ed said that he had been thinking about retaining the pages that the user had 
clicked on. He did not think that he would want to create categories within his 
prototype. Ed is currently using the folder hierarchy as his categorization. 
The starred categories in the prototype are based on the category trees. Bob 
pointed out that there are previous categories that are attached to the pages 
that are not part of the category tree. Bob wondered if there was way to track 
these user assigned categories and further that if users could assign their own 
categories of their initials, then the prototype might be able to track pages 
that the user had marked with their initials. Ed an Raul both felt that this 
would not scale well. Ed felt that tracking the pages that had been clicked 
would provide that functionality because these pages would be separated into 
categories so that the sheer number would not be overwhelming.

6) Art asked if there were a way of sharing these personal page lists. Ed 
thought that we could do that, but that it would be difficult to do an export 
automatically. Bob thought that it would not need to be done that way as long 
as there was a way to cut and paste from your personal prototype view onto your 
personal User page. That could be further edited to curate the links to be more 
useful. Dave asked if the links would be private until added to the User page 
and Bob said that they would only be public when put onto a User page.

7) Ed suggested that we could also incorporate forum content into this 
prototype which would be incredibly powerful. Ed said he was using SQLite 
search to find the topic titles. Raul thought that Chris' J Code Search might 
be a good search to use since it was just doing an extension to the URL as a 
way to select information. Bob wondered if jd might be an option instead of 
SQLite. 

8) Ed wondered how current his tool would need to be for it to be useful for 
Bob. He suggested a button that would allow the tool to be updated. Bob 
suggested the zip file that includes the entire wiki information aside from 
images. Bob would send the link for this to Ed. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Help/Offline


For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development
If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is March 23rd, 2023.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] New episode of the ArrayCast podcast

['robert therriault' via General]

On this episode of the ArrayCast podcast:

What things affect the performance of the array languages. Is being the fastest 
really that important for most users?

Host: Conor Hoekstra

Panel:  Marshall Lochbaum, Richard Park, and Bob Therriault.

https://www.arraycast.com/episodes/episode49-performance
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of the J Wiki Meeting of March 9, 2023

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-03-09 ==

Present: Ed Gottsman, Dave Lambert, Devon McCormick, Raul Miller, and Bob 
Therriault

1) Ed started things off with a presentation of a innovative wiki navigator 
that he has developed. Briefly, it provides visual a random access map of the 
entire wiki. Additionally, results of searches can be quickly displayed in a 
very user friendly manner. Another highlight is the quick access to NuVoc 
information. Any description that I have would not do it justice, so I 
encourage you to watch the video of the presentation. Although early in its 
development, it could be an important tool for the wiki. I think that you will 
get as sense of the application in the first 5 minutes, but the entire 28 
minute video is useful.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j17E_KUgKxk

2) Ed's video generated some questions about how the category trees might be 
linked to Ed's maps that allow users to determine the view of the wiki that 
they are presented. Bob then did a tour of the category tree on the new home 
page https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Home. It was pointed out by Ed 
that the category tree is more of a directed graph because nothing keeps them 
from having loops or having pages having multiple parents. The user would still 
view the links as part of a tree because they do not need to know that a page 
is connected to more than one category.
Bob felt that Ed's concept could have immediate effect on NuVoc as that is a 
more stable information system and is highly used.  

3) Raul raised the issue of how we might take new content and insert it into 
the appropriate category. Bob thought that that may become an aspect of the J 
Wiki meetings to review the new pages and decide where to place them. It is in 
the best interest of the content creator to work with the team to promote their 
information. Ed asked if new pages might have an uncategorized tag. Bob said 
users would be able to attach their own categories in general terms, but that 
category tree assignment would be better handled by the Wiki team to be able to 
provide appropriate context. 

4) Bob demonstrated his "Contributing to the J Wiki" page as an example of how 
the content of the category pages might be set up. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Contibuting_to_the_J_Wiki_W.2 Using 
table of contents with return to top of page. In the case of examples on other 
pages it will return to anchored positions to allow users to descend and ascend 
through the information smoothly. Dave asked whether there would be a template 
for users to work from. Devon pointed out that templates are hard without 
knowing what the content producer would want. Bob thinks that there might be 
some templates of different styles to encourage people to be more consistent in 
the content they produce because templates would make it easier. Individual 
users would be free to choose to use a template or not. Ed asked if there were 
a way to clone pages. Bob suggested that it could be done by copy and paste 
from an edit page, but what Ed suggests would be one button approach.


For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development
If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is March 16th, 2023.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of the J Wiki Meeting of March 1st, 2023

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-03-01 ==
Present: Art Anger, Dave Lambert, Devon McCormick, Raul Miller, and Bob 
Therriault

1) Art began the discussion with a question about the ambiguity of the term row 
- is it adding two rows together or if it is the sum of the atoms in the row. 
Raul suggested that examples can go a long way in clarifying those issues. Art 
wondered if the term sum over a row might be a good approach. Devon said he 
thought the examples are the best approach. 

2) Bob showed the page that he had started about contributing to the wiki. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Contibuting_to_the_J_Wiki_W.2 He hopes 
to explore the creation of this page as a way to come up with a template for 
the content of other category tree pages that are not at the top of the 
hierarchy. As Bob showed the category tree, Dave remarked that he had not seen 
that before and would certainly take a look at it. 

3) Bob showed a mind map that he had developed for the content of the 
contributions page and took input on what would be appropriate content. Bob 
felt that the first part of the page should be about how to join the wiki and 
what expectations are for contributors. Bob also suggested that he might use 
collapsible content to minimize the need to have the user leave the page. Bob 
planned to use Devon's User page for wiki tips  
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/User:Devon_McCormick/WikiTips#time:1 since 
there was some very good content there. Raul mentioned that a frequently asked 
questions section might be a good are for the page. Bob said he was planning to 
use a question format so that the user could quickly get answers from a drop 
down. Art suggested that there also be examples in the answers, so that users 
might use the example as a template. Art wondered about using the mouse over 
for a pop-up, but the feeling of the group was that pop-ups can obscure 
information as much as they add to it. Diagrams might be an example where pop 
ups can add because when the mouse is off the diagram then the whole diagram is 
available. Devon brought the Essays/Cat across to the new wiki 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Essays/Cat so that it would not be lost and we 
could use the description of categories as a starting point for wiki 
contributors.  The end result of this work on the Contribution page is to 
provide a guide for contributors so that we can use references to the 
information instead of doing individual explanations for contributors. The 
Contribution page may allow us to spend our energy on exceptions rather than 
explain run of the mill challenges. 

4) Raul wondered about the ways that search would be used with the categories. 
Bob showed that the wiki search had a tab for advanced search that enables 
categories and that the J Code search might include categories as well. The 
wiki search should have categories prioritized if that is possible. This would 
also make good content for the page on Using the Wiki.

5) Discussing the style guide, Bob felt that we should be using the  tag 
more often to create footnotes. This has the added benefit of ordering the 
footnotes as well as showing the link of a footnote without having to disrupt 
the text.

6) A discussion on what the expectations that we would have of contributors 
followed. Is the wiki a wild west wiki where everyone can contribute as they 
wish in the form that they wish or a more restricted one. Devon and Raul felt 
that we should not be too prescriptive in our expectations and let the wiki 
grow organically. Art mentioned that this growth should be done within the 
structure. Bob felt that there were parts of the wiki like NuVoc that were a 
bit more restrictive than the general content pages. Raul pointed out that 
there are other areas like the Fifty Shades of J that also have more of a 
structure than general content. The J wiki group may end up in the position of 
reviewing new contributions to fit them to the proper categories and also to 
help contributors make their pages more visible.  

7) Bob asked about the approach that we should take to organize voluntary 
contributions. A more business-like approach would be to give deadlines for 
completion. Devon mentioned the approach that had been used with Fifty Shades 
of J https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Fifty_Shades_of_J which was a sign up and 
then put in a check mark when the page is completed. Bob thought that as we 
find pages that need to be updated that we could add them to a list for people 
to select. There is an Update category that could fall those pages as we 
discover that. Devon felt that it might be a good introduction to wiki 
maintenance that would follow people's interests. Bob wondered if there should 
be a deadline on how long that we leave an update page once a person has 
claimed it. Devon thought that we could use  the discussion pages to remind 
people of their commitments and to free up pages when a person could not 
complete. Devon though that we 

[Jgeneral] The topic for this episode of the ArrayCast podcast is the release of j9.4 and what it brings to J users

['robert therriault' via General]

J9.4 is released with multiple threads, faster large number calculations and 
error message improvements. 

Host: Conor Hoekstra

Guest: Henry Rich

Panel:  Marshall Lochbaum, Adám Brudzewsky, and Bob Therriault.

https://www.arraycast.com/episodes/episode48-henry-rich
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of the J Wiki Meeting of February 23, 2023

['robert therriault' via General]

== Report of Meeting 2023-02-23 ==
Present: Art Anger, Bryce LeCates, Devon McCormick, Raul Miller, and Bob 
Therriault

1) We were joined by Bryce Lecates, a newcomer to J who is interested in the 
development of the wiki. Bryce was invited to join the wiki as a user. He 
indicated that there was a lot of information on the wiki, but some of the 
information is difficult to find and not always where you would expect. Bob 
shared the tip that when he finds useful pages he bookmarks them for future 
reference because there are times where he has found a page once and not been 
able to find that page again. 

2) Bob showed the main page with its category tree 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Home and explained that pages are 
attached to the category tree and there are also opportunities to create 
content on the category pages. Bob has taken a first pass at categorizing the 
2400 wiki pages, https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Special:AllPages all pages but 
then found out that this did not include  the User pages 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Special:ListUsers, so that there may be several 
hundred more pages to categorize. These may take a little more time because 
user pages are not already grouped by topic. Nuvoc 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:NuVoc_R.1 was given as an example 
where the category page had a link to NuVoc in the content because without that 
content link, the link to NuVoc would be lost in the multitude of pages that 
are connected to it. 

3) Bryce asked if the Category tree would be available on all the pages, as it 
takes up quite a bit of space. Bob said that the Category tree will only show 
up on the Page Map and the Home page, although access would be given through 
the J Code Search navigation bar 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/J_Code_Search_Bar. Bryce asked if the sidebar 
will remain the same. Bob said that the sidebar would be losing the link to the 
prototype wiki, but would retain a link to NuVoc and the Page Map 

4)Bryce said in exploring the Category tree he has found things that he had 
neve seen before, such as Scott Locklin's blog on the community links page 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Blogs_C.2 . Bob said that he has 
discovered a lot in the categorization process. Bob also noted that some of the 
information is out of date, although could be brought to date by someone who 
had an interest in the topic and the skills to adapt to the current versions of 
J. 

5) Bryce talked about how when he was exposed to jQt, it took a while to learn 
that there were edit pages in addition to the terminal pages. Bryce has found 
jQt very useful, but there may be an opportunity to do a better job of 
onboarding users in the IDE. Bryce also asked about the forums and the 
information that is contained in the archives. There may be an opportunity to 
linking parts of the wiki to specific forum threads. This seems to have 
happened more often in the past, although there have been some recent examples 
with the implementation of the thread primitives.  

6) Bryce wondered if there was a way to have Category trees retain some 
information when you are backing out of a search. At this time the page is set 
to two levels of subcategories opening, which means that you can lose your 
thread if you were down a few subcategories  which close back up after you 
return, but Bob will look into that. 

7) Bob mentioned that he had sent an email to Chris and that Chris had 
suggested that we were ready to merge our prototype wiki to the current wiki. 
Bob mentioned that it was more a matter of building structure on the current 
wiki through categorization and not changing the pages on the current wiki at 
this stage. Bob had brought across the code for the J code Search Bar and Art's 
Essay Index are already on the current wiki 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page and just need to be updated with the 
different essay categories. https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Anger/Essays_Index. 

8) Help Offline https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Help/Offline is a place that 
you can get the wiki content in zip format, but does not include images - only 
pages that link to the image files.

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development
If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 24:00 (UTC) Next meeting is March 2nd, 2023.

--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of the J Wiki meeting of February 16th, 2023

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, Devon McCormick, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

1) We started off with a discussion of the categorization that Bob has done. 
Raul pointed out that in cases such as NYCJUG pages there are many sub 
categories that could be applied in addition to the User Groups category. Bob 
let that it will often be the case in omnibus pages where there are multiple 
categories and this will allow users to access the subtopics of these pages. 
Bob showed the cut and paste page he is using make the addition of categories 
to a page much simpler. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Category_Tree_Cut_and_Paste

2) Bob demonstrated the process of adding categories to pages. Raul mentioned 
that CGI has two meanings Computer Generated Images and Common Gateway 
Interface. Bob said that the image based interpretation would probably shown in 
Gallery. Bob placed the Scripts/Stereo Plot page 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Scripts/Stereo_Plot into the Gallery in the 
prototype wiki, unintentionally showing the confusion with having two servers. 
Devon pointed out that, once attached, the category did not show up on the page 
and Bob said this was to keep the category space cleaner by keeping the 
category tree categories hidden. Other categories that are not part of the 
category tree will not be picked up by the category tree. This allows users to 
create category names that will be useful for searches but will not be affected 
by or affect the category tree categories.  

3) Raul suggested that category tree categories could be differentiated by a 
unicode character. Bob had explored that, but found it distracting and at this 
point new categories in the category tree would need to be built to replace the 
existing categories. 

4) The plan going forward is to do the 'icon style' pages to the top two levels 
of the tree https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Newcomers_N and then do 
text and link style pages for lower levels that will be easier to change, but 
still very functional. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Forums_and_Community_N.2

5) Art suggested that the 'Welcome to J?' on the video should have an 
exclamation mark instead of a question mark. That change was quickly made. 

6) Discussion of whether a second server is necessary. Raul said that it is 
nice to have a sandbox to experiment with but there was no specific need at 
this time. Bob said he would talk to Chris about it and see what he thought. 
Bob mentioned that it was possible to create a zipped version of the whole wiki 
using this page. https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Help/Offline

7) Devon mentioned the wiki at the NYCJUG meeting, but there was not a great 
deal of enthusiasm to dive in and do work. This is not a surprise as building 
the community will take some focussed work in addition to the content curation. 

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development
If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 24:00 (UTC) Next meeting is February 23rd, 
2023.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

Re: [Jgeneral] Wiki script upload

['robert therriault' via General]

First, thank you for doing the work on 50 Shades Jan-Pieter.

For the upload, I see that the Mime type of the original file is ‎(file size: 1 
KB, MIME type: text/ijs). 

I am not aware of any changes, but perhaps changing the MIME type from 
text/plain to text/ijs might work?

Chris may have a much better answer if mine is not a solution.

Cheers, bob

> On Feb 21, 2023, at 12:50, Jan-Pieter Jacobs  
> wrote:
> 
> After a long time of inactivity, I decided to work a bit on one of the last
> unprocessed chapters of Fifty Shades of J, Chapter 45.
> 
> When trying to upload the revised script to the wiki, I get the following
> warning:
> "File extension ".ijs" does not match the detected MIME type of the file
> (text/plain)."
> This seems more like an error to me, as it prevents me from uploading the
> file.
> 
> I kept the same name for the file as the one I downloaded, and uploads for
> previous chapters (a fair amount of time ago) used to work, as far as I can
> remember.
> 
> Did any wiki settings change? Could they be changed back?
> Thanks,
> Jan-Pieter
> --
> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Leslie Goldsmith is the guest of this episode of ArrayCast

['robert therriault' via General]

Leslie Goldsmith wrote I.P. Sharp's secure email system when he was in high 
school and that was just the beginning of his array language journey.

Host: Conor Hoekstra

Guest: Leslie Goldsmith

Panel:  Marshall Lochbaum, Adám Brudzewsky, Stephen Taylor and Bob Therriault.

https://www.arraycast.com/episodes/episode47-leslie-goldsmith
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of the J Wiki Meeting of February 9th, 2023

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

1) Bob showed off the work that he has been doing in category trees  
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Page_Map and is in the process of categorizing 
all the pages in the wiki. Originally, he was categorizing across a number of 
subtrees until he realized that categorizing the Reference section would speed 
up the categorization of Newcomers and Developers. Since the category tree is 
in the process of being developed there are still categories that may be added, 
but in the meantime there is an opportunity for anyone to categorize pages. 
There is also a page with the different categories in a tree structure so that 
they can be easily cut and pasted onto any page. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki/Category_Tree_Cut_and_Paste

2) The plan is to have the 'pretty pages' extend one layer down 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Newcomers_N and then have simpler 
pages with text and links below that 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Forums_and_Community_N.2. 

3) At this stage, Bob had worked through the pages as far as the Backus-Nauer 
page. More categorization is planned for this week with a goal of having all 
the pages categorized into at least one category in the next 2 weeks. When the 
process has been refined there will be instructions added to the wiki how to 
contribute page 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Contibuting_to_the_J_Wiki_W.2 so that 
the process can be used easily for anyone who would like to highlight useful 
pages in specific categories.

4) The process of categorizing pages has been very illuminating, with pages 
such as Raul's 'Why J' from 2014 having some very useful content 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Essays/WhyJ.

5) Pages with references prior to the 800 versions of J will be put in archive 
areas. The 800 versions were the last ones that had a 32 bit format and some 
features of the 800 series such as Taylor series were removed as primitives. 
This will allow the wiki to be more relevant for current users, while still 
providing access to historic information.

6) There was a discussion of Ed Gottsman's J Flashcards, which he now has 
working in a J script. There are a couple of hundred cards, each with a 
question section, and answer section and a section with links to reference 
material. This may become an add-on and would be very useful for increasing 
fluency in the language. Ed has provided Bob a working script and Bob will 
provide it if requested before the add-on is available.

8) Bob talked about the time-line for discontinuing the prototype wiki 
https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Home. Bob has already transferred the 
links categories that Tom McGuire had added to the current wiki and has 
encouraged Tom to make any subsequent changes to the current wiki. Anyone who 
has done work that they wish to retain should have saved it locally prior to 
the end of the month. After next week's meeting, we will confirm with Chris 
Burke that the prototype wiki can be discontinued at the end of February.

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development
If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 24:00 (UTC) Next meeting is February 16th, 
2023.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of J wiki meeting of February 2, 2023

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, Devon McCormick, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

1) We began with a discussion of activating add-ons from the wiki. Art would 
like to be able to click on an add-on that he has identified and have it 
installed. Bob usually thinks of the description of the add-ons on the wiki as 
documentation. Raul suggests that having a cut and  paste instruction on the 
wiki that could be used in the J environment. He thinks that internet security 
would not allow one click implementation. Art wonders if updates could be done 
the same way. Raul found that install will also update any scripts that are out 
of date. 

2) Art further wondered why GitHub was used to store scripts rather than the 
wiki. Devon points out GitHub is version control and Raul adds that the wiki is 
documentation. Bob notes that in the past there have been times when he has 
uploaded scripts to the wiki. This may have been prior to GitHub. There are 
also scripts that are marked as literate 
https://code.jsoftware.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Category:Literate and used 
as documentation and example programs. 

3) Art asks about how much documentation that we should be doing about GitHub, 
and whether there should be a consistent description between GitHub and the 
wiki. Raul says that there is really not a problem with duplication. Bob 
suggests that a link from the wiki to the README file would be a way to avoid 
duplication. Raul thinks that the duplication is good to overcome connectivity 
issues. Bob thinks that there should also be a description on the wiki of which 
IDE's the add-ons apply to. Pacman takes care of this automatically with its 
screening lists based on version and IDE. The wiki would have all the add-ons, 
so the IDE and version information would be necessary for users to understand 
why certain add-ons may not be visible. Devon pointed out that recently he had 
a nonce error and got information from the forum. Should the wiki be providing 
this information? Raul pointed out that the beta version of J has more 
expressive error messages and the error that Devon found now has a more 
detailed description. All agreed that some GitHub instruction should be 
included on the wiki so that new users can make better use of the add-ons.

4) Bob showed his category tree https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Page_Map which 
can have pages attached to the different categories without having the pages 
displayed. When you click on a category page, 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Forums_and_Community_N.2 the pages and 
subcategories are listed at the bottom of the category page automatically. The 
upper part of the category page can have the same sort of content as any other 
page, which can be used to provide context. These category trees can go down 
many levels which allows much finer granularity.

5) The next step is to go through all the pages in the wiki and attach them to 
appropriate categories. When this has been done the content can be developed 
based on the pages that have been attached to the categories. Devon asked about 
cases where J Playground shows up in multiple places in the tree. Bob showed 
that the different instances would have different contexts depending on where 
they were. The Newcomers subtree would have basic information and the 
Playground subtree would have much more advanced information. 

6) Bob thinks he will implement the category tree beginning with the Reference 
subtree since it is the way that most currently use the J wiki. Later we can 
add Newcomers and Developers subtrees as different windows into the wiki's 
information. 

7) Bob is planning to expand the contributing to the wiki section 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Contibuting_to_the_J_Wiki_W.2 so that 
others may also be able to categorize in addition to creating content for the 
wiki. 

8) Devon asks about getting more people involved. Bob says lately he has been 
more involved with structure. Art points out that we are doing weekly meetings 
which are publicized. Bob says the focus on building a community approach is 
something that needs to be amplified. In the past there have been one time 
messages, but to build a community there needs to be more consistent messaging 
over a longer period of time.

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development
If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 24:00 (UTC) Next meeting is February 9th, 
2023.

--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] A new episode of the ArrayCast podcast is available

['robert therriault' via General]

On this episode we speak to Michael Higginson, a q programmer who won the 
professional class of the 2022 Dyalog competition. 

Host: Conor Hoekstra

Guest: Michael Higginson

Panel:  Marshall Lochbaum, Rich Park, Stephen Taylor and Bob Therriault.

https://www.arraycast.com/episodes/episode46-michael-higginson
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of the J Wiki Meeting of January 26, 2023

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

1) We began with a discussion of whether there should be a way to launch J from 
the wiki. Bob mentioned that the J Playground would the way to do this. Any 
other way would require J to be downloaded and Raul pointed out that with 
multiple potential versions of J that it might not be obvious which one should 
be started up. The concern would be for add-ons that the J Playground could not 
load, but that should not be too high a priority according to Art. 

2) This led to a discussion about how GitHub was used by J. First, for add-ons 
that are available through the Package Manager and second through installing 
from an individual link. We are not sure that this could be available to J 
playground other than copy and paste into the edit window. 

3) Bob showed his use of the tree categories and the fact that the 
sub-categories can be ordered arbitrarily, which means that the category name 
does not have start with an ordering prefix. Inserting into the category tree 
becomes much easier because of the reordering flexibility. However, to keep the 
category names unique a hierarchical label could be a suffix where it is not so 
noticeable. The category references would begin with a letter referring to the 
main subtrees. N - Newcomers, D - Developers, R - Reference, C - Community, P - 
J Playground. The subsequent identifiers would be separated by '.'s N.1.1 would 
be the first grandchild of the first child of the subtree N which is Newcomers. 

4) Bob pointed out that categorizing becomes a way to view the wiki. Newcomers, 
Developers and Reference would be general views of the wiki that would be 
useful for larger audiences, but there is nothing stopping us from narrowing 
those views down by restricting to new subtrees. As an example, the information 
in the wiki could be repurposed into a subtree for Machine Learning and then 
that category tree could be given as a link for those who want to see the wiki 
in that way. The category trees allow a context for users without changing the 
existing pages, because the context is contained in the category tree. NuVoc 
could have a tree driven search in addition to the current table driven search. 

5) Subsequently, Bob has begun to create the category trees in the current wiki 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Page_Map  These category trees can be built 
without changing the current information in the wiki and getting in the way of 
user access. At the point that the categories are populated the Home page 
category https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Home can become the redirect 
for the Main page https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page. Once the category 
trees are established then there is further work to make the trees more 
comprehensive and this can occur over time through curation.

6) We also found that we can access categories with the advanced tab of the 
Wiki Search, which means that we should be able to include categories in our 
searches, which is another way to access grouped information under category 
names.

7) Bob will be working on the general categories and further development on the 
curation, but is not planning to do specialty categories outside of the areas 
of his interest, although he will put together information about how to 
construct these trees. Also, looking whether it makes sense to store selected 
videos like the J promo on the wiki to avoid the advertising on free Youtube 
accounts.

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development
If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 24:00 (UTC) Next meeting is February 2nd, 
2023.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

Re: [Jgeneral] wiki ~ Vocabulary/Foreigns

['robert therriault' via General]

I hear you Ian,

That is the reason that we are having a discussion about the next step. If we 
get it right then we will not need to revisit the decision.

Thanks again for the observation that started this off.

Cheers, bob

> On Jan 29, 2023, at 13:51, 'Ian Shannon' via General  
> wrote:
> 
> Bob,
> 
> Thanks for the information about corrections.  While I am happy to assist, 
> I'm a little scared of what sometimes happens on Wikipedia where "facts" are 
> repeatedly changes back and forth!  
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Ian
> 
> Ian Shannon
> Undertaking rigorous statistics in support of the NSW environment
> For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and 
> wrong. Mencken 
> 
>> -Original Message-
>> From: General  On Behalf Of 'robert
>> therriault' via General
>> Sent: 30 January 2023 5:46
>> To: General forum 
>> Subject: Re: [Jgeneral] wiki ~ Vocabulary/Foreigns
>> 
>> I went in to fix it, but Raul had already beaten me to it!
>> 
>> Ian, if you have the time, we can always use sharp eyes to make wiki 
>> corrections.
>> All you need to do is sign up. https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/About
>> 
>> Cheers, bob
>> 
>> 
>>> On Jan 29, 2023, at 03:30, 'Ian Shannon' via General 
>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hi there,
>>> 
>>> Just a short note about the wiki.
>>> 
>>> On
>>> 
>>> https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Vocabulary/Foreigns
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Under the heading m=1 (Files)
>>> 
>>> 
>>> It has
>>> 
>>> Action  x(if any) n   y   Rank  Result
>>> 
>>> Locks   -   30  ''   _  
>>> A table where each row
>> contains
>>>
>>> filenumber, start, length
>>> 
>>> representing one lock established by 1!:21
>>> 
>>> 
>>> It should be
>>> 
>>> representing one lock established by 1!:31
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Regards,
>>> 
>>> Ian
>>> Ian Shannon
>>> Undertaking rigorous statistics in support of the NSW environment For
>>> every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and
>>> wrong. Mencken
>>> 
>>> --
>>> --
>>> -- This email is intended for the addressee(s)
>>> named and may contain confidential and/or privileged information.
>>> If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender and then 
>>> delete it
>> immediately.
>>> Any views expressed in this email are those of the individual sender except 
>>> where
>> the sender expressly and with authority states them to be the views of the 
>> NSW
>> Office of Environment and Heritage.
>>> 
>>> PLEASE CONSIDER THE ENVIRONMENT BEFORE PRINTING THIS EMAIL
>>> --
>>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
>> 
>> --
>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
> --
> This email is intended for the addressee(s) named and may contain 
> confidential and/or privileged information. 
> If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender and then 
> delete it immediately.
> Any views expressed in this email are those of the individual sender except 
> where the sender expressly and with authority states them to be the views of 
> the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage.
> 
> PLEASE CONSIDER THE ENVIRONMENT BEFORE PRINTING THIS EMAIL
> --
> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

Re: [Jgeneral] wiki ~ Vocabulary/Foreigns

['robert therriault' via General]

Thanks Raul,

From your link it looks to me that only DOS (windows?) and the Mac operating 
system are supported for locking. Am I correct with this interpretation.

Also because I am not familiar with the source code, what does this 
documentation indicate about the changes Devon proposed to 1!:20 and 1!:30 and 
I proposed for 1!:32?

Cheers, bob

> On Jan 29, 2023, at 12:13, Raul Miller  wrote:
> 
> It may be helpful, here to look at the list of 1!:n commands in J's source 
> code
> 
> https://github.com/jsoftware/jsource/blob/master/jsrc/x.c#L77
> 
> The names are in two columns (monadic, dyadic) and many of the names
> are usefully descriptive. (They all begin with jt which isn't relevant
> here, but the part which follows is a good sanity check on their
> functionality.)
> 
> Note also that the file locking functions only work on certain
> operating systems.
> 
> FYI,
> 
> -- 
> Raul
> 
> On Sun, Jan 29, 2023 at 3:04 PM 'robert therriault' via General
>  wrote:
>> 
>> Yep, I agree
>> 
>> Also, that 1!:32 should have
>> 
>> filenumber,start,length
>> filenumber is a file number from 1!:21
>> 
>> changed to:
>> 
>> filenumber,start,length
>> filenumber is a file number from 1!:30
>> 
>> I will make the changes in a couple of hours, unless someone shows me to be 
>> mistaken (or makes the change first)
>> 
>> Note: this is a case where the discussion page could be used, if we get in 
>> the habit of monitoring them.
>> 
>> Cheers, bob
>> 
>>> On Jan 29, 2023, at 11:42, Devon McCormick  wrote:
>>> 
>>> These look reversed:
>>> 
>>> Open Files20 ''  _A table where each row
>>> contains filenumber;filename representing one file opened by 1!:*31*
>>> Locks   30     ''  _     A table where each row
>>> contains filenumber,start,length representing one lock established by 1!:
>>> *21*
>>> 
>>> because 1!:31 is "Lock File Region" whereas 1!:21 is "Open".
>>> 
>>> On Sun, Jan 29, 2023 at 1:45 PM 'robert therriault' via General <
>>> gene...@jsoftware.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> I went in to fix it, but Raul had already beaten me to it!
>>>> 
>>>> Ian, if you have the time, we can always use sharp eyes to make wiki
>>>> corrections. All you need to do is sign up.
>>>> https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/About
>>>> 
>>>> Cheers, bob
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> On Jan 29, 2023, at 03:30, 'Ian Shannon' via General <
>>>> gene...@jsoftware.com> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Hi there,
>>>>> 
>>>>> Just a short note about the wiki.
>>>>> 
>>>>> On
>>>>> 
>>>>> https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Vocabulary/Foreigns
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Under the heading m=1 (Files)
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> It has
>>>>> 
>>>>> Actionx(if any) n   y   Rank  Result
>>>>> 
>>>>> Locks -   30  ''   _
>>>> A table where each row contains
>>>>> 
>>>> filenumber, start, length
>>>>> 
>>>> representing one lock established by 1!:21
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> It should be
>>>>> 
>>>>> representing one lock established by 1!:31
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Regards,
>>>>> 
>>>>> Ian
>>>>> Ian Shannon
>>>>> Undertaking rigorous statistics in support of the NSW environment
>>>>> For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and
>>>> wrong. Mencken
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>>> This email is intended for the addressee(s) named and may contain
>>>> confidential and/or privileged information.
>>>>> If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender and then
>>>> delete it immediately.
>>>>> Any views expressed in this email are those of the individual sender
>>>> except where the sender expressly and with authority states them to be the
>>>> views of the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage.
>>>>> 
>>>>> PLEASE CONSIDER THE ENVIRONMENT BEFORE PRINTING THIS EMAIL
>>>>> --
>>>>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> 
>>> Devon McCormick, CFA
>>> 
>>> Quantitative Consultant
>>> --
>>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
>> 
>> --
>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
> --
> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

Re: [Jgeneral] wiki ~ Vocabulary/Foreigns

['robert therriault' via General]

Yep, I agree

Also, that 1!:32 should have 

filenumber,start,length
filenumber is a file number from 1!:21

changed to:

filenumber,start,length
filenumber is a file number from 1!:30

I will make the changes in a couple of hours, unless someone shows me to be 
mistaken (or makes the change first)

Note: this is a case where the discussion page could be used, if we get in the 
habit of monitoring them.

Cheers, bob

> On Jan 29, 2023, at 11:42, Devon McCormick  wrote:
> 
> These look reversed:
> 
> Open Files20 ''  _A table where each row
> contains filenumber;filename representing one file opened by 1!:*31*
> Locks   30 ''  _ A table where each row
> contains filenumber,start,length representing one lock established by 1!:
> *21*
> 
> because 1!:31 is "Lock File Region" whereas 1!:21 is "Open".
> 
> On Sun, Jan 29, 2023 at 1:45 PM 'robert therriault' via General <
> gene...@jsoftware.com> wrote:
> 
>> I went in to fix it, but Raul had already beaten me to it!
>> 
>> Ian, if you have the time, we can always use sharp eyes to make wiki
>> corrections. All you need to do is sign up.
>> https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/About
>> 
>> Cheers, bob
>> 
>> 
>>> On Jan 29, 2023, at 03:30, 'Ian Shannon' via General <
>> gene...@jsoftware.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hi there,
>>> 
>>> Just a short note about the wiki.
>>> 
>>> On
>>> 
>>> https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Vocabulary/Foreigns
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Under the heading m=1 (Files)
>>> 
>>> 
>>> It has
>>> 
>>> Actionx(if any) n   y   Rank  Result
>>> 
>>> Locks -   30  ''   _
>>  A table where each row contains
>>> 
>> filenumber, start, length
>>> 
>> representing one lock established by 1!:21
>>> 
>>> 
>>> It should be
>>> 
>>> representing one lock established by 1!:31
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Regards,
>>> 
>>> Ian
>>> Ian Shannon
>>> Undertaking rigorous statistics in support of the NSW environment
>>> For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and
>> wrong. Mencken
>>> 
>>> 
>> --
>>> This email is intended for the addressee(s) named and may contain
>> confidential and/or privileged information.
>>> If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender and then
>> delete it immediately.
>>> Any views expressed in this email are those of the individual sender
>> except where the sender expressly and with authority states them to be the
>> views of the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage.
>>> 
>>> PLEASE CONSIDER THE ENVIRONMENT BEFORE PRINTING THIS EMAIL
>>> --
>>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
>> 
>> --
>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> Devon McCormick, CFA
> 
> Quantitative Consultant
> --
> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

Re: [Jgeneral] wiki ~ Vocabulary/Foreigns

['robert therriault' via General]

I went in to fix it, but Raul had already beaten me to it!

Ian, if you have the time, we can always use sharp eyes to make wiki 
corrections. All you need to do is sign up. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/About

Cheers, bob


> On Jan 29, 2023, at 03:30, 'Ian Shannon' via General  
> wrote:
> 
> Hi there,
> 
> Just a short note about the wiki.
> 
> On
> 
> https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Vocabulary/Foreigns
> 
> 
> Under the heading m=1 (Files)
> 
> 
> It has
> 
> Actionx(if any) n   y   Rank  Result
> 
> Locks -   30  ''   _  
> A table where each row contains
> 
> filenumber, start, length
> 
> representing one lock established by 1!:21
> 
> 
> It should be
> 
> representing one lock established by 1!:31
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Ian
> Ian Shannon
> Undertaking rigorous statistics in support of the NSW environment
> For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and 
> wrong. Mencken 
> 
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[Jgeneral] Report of the J Wiki Meeting for January 12, 2022

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, Ed Gottsman, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

1) The meeting began a bit later than usual with Bob showing some of the things 
that he had discovered about the category trees. There are two types of ways to 
add categories. One is to add a category to a page which allows you to group 
pages and the other way is to have other categories added to category pages 
which have a  prefix of Category: prior to their name and this creates a 
hierarchy of categories that results in a category tree. A category page 
describes each category and lists all the categories and pages that share the 
category. https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:Home This information is 
shown at the bottom of the category page, but above it the content can be like 
any other content page.  These category trees become navigation to the entire 
wiki right down to the level of individual pages based on the categories that 
have been assigned. https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:1)_Newcomers

2) Bob also showed the way that category trees automatically produce effective 
page maps through the category tree hierarchy. 
https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Page_Map The ordering of the pages is 
alphabetic by their name and those names can include numbers and unicode. If 
the name of each page begins with a numbering scheme then the name space can be 
kept clean and set in a specific order. This structure would make it easy to 
add additional categories at the end of any level of the tree. It would be 
slightly harder to insert an category in the middle of the tree. As a result, 
the plan will be to work on getting the category tree structure into a form 
that reflects the wiki accurately. The remaining work is to assign pages the 
appropriate categories within the category tree. Pages can be attached to a 
variety of positions in the tree allowing wiki pages to be used in different 
contexts.

3) As an example of how a category page could be used Bob showed an example of 
how the Newcomers view of NuVoc might include more foundational material to 
allow a better context for the Newcomer when they see NuVoc. 
https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Category:D)_Nuvoc  This will result in more 
work curating the information to be used in the structure. Ed asked what was 
meant by curation and Bob suggested that curation was the difference between a 
pile of books and an organized library that included librarians that could pass 
along their knowledge of the structure of information within the library. 

4) A discussion of the content that should be in the Developer and the Newcomer 
areas. Ed asked if there was a general agreement on the challenges of 
introducing the J language to Newcomers and Developers. His experience was that 
it was very difficult to introduce the language and employers reacted 
negatively to attempts to introduce J to enterprise. Bob felt that the reaction 
that Ed experienced is typical and that there is a good podcast episode of 
CoRecursive about introducing the new technologies. 
https://corecursive.com/040-tech-evangelism-with-gabriel-gonzalez/  The trick 
seems to be to introduce new technology in areas that it is ideally suited so 
that the disruption is minimal for the gain and expand from that initial gain. 

5) Ed showed the flashcards that he has made that allow people to learn the 
lore of J  based on the phrases of J. He used NuVoc as his source with one side 
a description of the problem in English and the second a phrase in J that would 
be a solution and the third side was references for further study. He has done 
about 250 flash cards. Ed then looked at APLcart that Adám Brudzewsky had 
developed https://aplcart.info/  and felt that APLcart could be the foundation 
of many ways to access the information either as flash cards, keyword search, 
or examples for further study. Ed wanted to take the temperature of the meeting 
to see if there was interest in crowdsourcing the information that would go 
into the J version of APLcart. Within the meeting it was felt this would be a 
good project to work on. Bob mentioned that Adám had offered the use of the 
APLcart framework for J. Raul said that keywords might be a good way to 
generate keywords for particular disciplines. An electrical engineer might use 
the same phrase as a mathematician for very different reasons. 

6) Raul pointed out that the Vocabulary was originally an appendix of the J 
Dictionary and with NuVoc we seem to have reversed that order and sometimes the 
context that existed with the Dictionary is harder to recapture. 


For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development  

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 24:00 (UTC) Next meeting is January 19th, 
2023.
--
For 

[Jgeneral] Report on the J wiki Meeting of January 5, 2023

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

1)Bob began showing some of the things he had done on the current wiki. 
Specifically creation of the home page https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Home an 
additional navigation bar for wiki hints and announcements 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/W Wiki Hints can be seen here 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Home/wik and Notices and Announcements can be 
seen here https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Home/not

2) Bob also showed the ways that he can use the html comments to ignore some of 
the mark up that is required for the navigation bars. This means that the 
navigation bars can be put on the page and the commented out. Bob wondered if 
it was possible to use a bot to strip off these comments and reveal the 
navigation bar mark up. Raul suggested that bots can be unreliable and should 
be tested before this is relied on for the transition.

3)Bob also showed how he had used categories to identify the parents of pages 
and this might provide a way to create an Apter Tree type 
functionality.https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Essays/Tree_Sum Raul wondered if 
this would create too many categories and suggested using the __HIDDENCAT__ 
magic word to keep categories from being displayed on the page if they are only 
used for structure. 
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Categories#Hidden_categories  Raul pointed 
out that Apter Trees are good for hitting everything in the tree at once and it 
is not clear how this might be useful for the J wiki since you are editing a 
page at a time. Bob suggested that it might be useful to identify direct 
descendents. The "this page is linked from" function in MediaWiki does not 
identify direct descendents.

4) Bob also did a quick exploration of category trees in MediaWiki and decided 
that he should investigate that option further to see if there was existing 
functionality in the wiki API.   


For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development  

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 24:00 (UTC) Next meeting is January 12th, 
2023.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] A new episode of the ArrayCast podcast is out

['robert therriault' via General]

Hi everyone,

On this episode we talk about recreational programming and advice about how to 
decide on which array language to learn. Host: Conor Hoekstra Panel: Marshall 
Lochbaum, Adám Brudzewsky, Stephen Taylor and Bob Therriault. 
https://www.arraycast.com/episodes/episode44-language-choice-and-recreational-programming

Cheers, bob
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of the J Wiki meeting of December 29, 2022

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, Devon McCormick, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

1) Raul began by showing an APL https://janiczek.github.io/tryapl-elm/  doc 
that could be a model to allow for roll over of characters and information that 
may provide an easy way for users to be able to interact with the language as 
they learn it. Devon mentioned that the groupings of the different functions 
were useful for understanding as well. Bob said that the last step that he sees 
for the J playground is that it gets a permanent link and then links could 
start to be created for examples in NuVoc that could be useful for newcomers.

2) There was discussion about a forum post of a newcomer and that the fact that 
although many different backgrounds for newcomers to the language there would 
be some common traits that might be worth considering as the wiki is built out. 
This lead into a discussion of what a similar structure would look like for 
developers. There might be a need to be able to show potential developers that 
there are bridges to other languages, since many potential developers may be 
interested in using tools from other languages such as Python. Py'nAPL was 
mentioned as a bridge to Dyalog APL. https://github.com/Dyalog/pynapl 

3)Brainstorming areas that we think that developers would like to access, we 
came up the fact that many of the essays in J provide useful information at a 
developer level. Raul pointed out that there are a wide range of developers and 
tha should be taken into account. Bob used the example that it would be good to 
have interoperability with other languages. Raul pointed out that often that 
sort of interoperability requires a champion to develop. Bob felt that it is 
more important to have sections of the wiki that provide a place for those type 
of essays to exist because that would promote more of those interoperability 
essays. Other areas might be the existing graphics and plot areas of the 
language. Devon is looking at data structures that many languages use, but may 
not be as useful in J. One of the areas that Devon is interested in is how hash 
tables would be used in J. The explanation may have two approaches. One may be 
a discussion that shows why a data structure may not be necessary in J to get 
the required functionality and the second could be an explanation of how the 
same sort of functionality can be achieved with J's tools. It was pointed out 
that hash table are over hyped in college courses, but may not be as useful in 
reality. Bob talked about the way that Henry Rich's J for C programmers 
approaches the concept of loops and the ways that J is able to use other 
techniques to get the same results that would require loops in other languages. 
This might be done for a number of other data structures. 

4) The goal for the wiki structure for developers may be to provide a boost 
that allows developers to become effective more quickly. Bob used the example 
of Apter Trees that can simulate the tree data structure and leverage the power 
of array languages. Without the explanation of these type of techniques a 
developer may leave language because they do not know how to create the 
foundation that their applications may require. Raul pointed out that there are 
a variety of ways to use these data structures and that in order to be useful 
the information may need to create a number of examples that cover the 
different ways that the data structure may be used. From a recent ArrayCast 
episode, guest John Earnest mentioned that a lot of his work involved extending 
the array languages into multimedia. J was mentioned as a language that has a 
lot of existing hooks, but these have not been developed in a way that makes it 
easy for beginners to use. Extending the use of the language to these different 
domains may be a good way to increase the popularity of the language.   

5) Bob then outlined a plan to introduce the new navigation to the wiki during 
the month of January and use the style of the prototype wiki 
https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page to start to organize the content of 
the existing wiki https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page . 

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development  

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 24:00 (UTC) Next meeting is January 5th, 2023.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] A new episode of ArrayCast

['robert therriault' via General]

John Earnest returns to talk about his work extending the array languages into 
other domains and his new project, Decker. 

Host: Conor Hoekstra

Guest: John Earnest

Panel:  Marshall Lochbaum, Adám Brudzewsky, Stephen Taylor and Bob Therriault.

https://www.arraycast.com/episodes/episode43-john-earnest-decker
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of the J Wiki Meeting of December 15, 2022

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

1) Bob began by talking about the template that he has been developing to 
create navigation bars and wiki pages which should speed up the transition if 
he ever gets around to implementing it. He also mentioned the Julia programming 
language web page which uses icons heavily and could potentially flatten the 
hierarchy of the wiki pages if it were to be used. https://julialang.org/ This 
may lead to a future adjustment to how many layers the navigation has. 

2) Art mentioned that some of the pages on the prototype wiki have duplicated 
search bars. This is a result of the addition that Raul was able to make to the 
MediaWiki Site notice functionality that allowed the search bar to be moved out 
of the content. Contrast these two pages to see the difference. 
https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page/Community vs 
https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page

3) Bob talked about there will be a developer tab that will be added along side 
the newcomer tab that would provide a boost to those who are interested in 
developing for J in the specific ways that may be of interest to developers. In 
both the cases of Developers and Newcomers the more specific navigation bar 
would be used and possibly have a link on the page that would return you to the 
Reference tab if that is how you came to the page.

4) Raul wondered about what the next steps are for things that he might be 
involved with with php or bot coding. Bob felt that bringing the J code search 
box to be able to work with categories (perhaps with a minimum of 10 pages 
using the category to reduce the number of categories in the search). Also, to 
make the wiki sign-up easier for newcomers. Other than that the ongoing work on 
the wiki will be more involved with community building and finding ways to 
increase community participation in building the wiki. Raul wondered if there 
would be security restrictions in changing the J search code since it involves 
php and javascript. Bob suggested that it might be brought in as an extension. 
Raul also wondered if gadgets might work as a different wiki tool. There might 
be opportunities to build on the navigation structure to trim the number of 
pages that would be searched. As an example, you might be able to eliminate 
archived pages from a search and make it much quicker.

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development  

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 24:00 (UTC) Next meeting is December 22nd, 
2022.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report on the J Wiki Meeting of December 8th

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, Devon McCormick, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

1) Bob started by showing the new pages that he had developed that used Raul's 
method of putting the search bar above the content. It was agreed that the 
presentation was better and no reason could be found that this would interfere 
with page notifications. Bob also showed off the new front page that emphasized 
the promotional video more. https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page3  Devon 
mentioned that there could be other links that might be put up on the main 
page. Bob had suggested that one of the things that he had thought about adding 
was wiki hints that explain that structure of the wiki and also how to get 
involved. 

2) This led into a discussion about the structure of the wiki. Devon mentioned 
that a good search can alleviate some of the navigation issues and Bob showed 
an outline of the wiki based on the page map of the wiki. He planned to update 
the page map with regard to the new structure with added pages such as a 
beginners introduction to NuVoc. Raul suggested an approach of only explaining 
verbs up to rank one. Art suggested that there is a beginner's NuVoc page that 
might be useful for this content. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/User:Devon_McCormick/MinimalBeginningJ  Devon 
mentioned that the community page is useful and that the forums should also be 
promoted on the newcomers page and mentioned that there could be cover pages in 
the newcomer's area to give a gentle introduction to the community areas for 
newcomers.

3)This led into a discussion about what would a developers page look like. 
Devon suggested that developers might use information about how to access C 
programs and DLL's. Bob also mentioned Apter trees 
https://github.com/tlack/atree  as a way to give would be developers a boost if 
they were trying to develop tree algorithms using arrays. Devon had mentioned 
that had done similar essays about trees and these would be very useful to 
developers as well. Raul suggested a tutorial that might start with a looping 
approach in J that could be transformed into more array type thinking that 
might go several iterations before finding an elegant solution. This led Raul 
to talk about including information about special code and bottlenecks that 
might occur in the language. Bob mentioned the JPM - J Performance Manager and 
Devon was the only one who had used it and found it very good. Also, he 
mentioned that it looks a lot like what Sharp APL had 30 years ago.  Bob 
mentioned the purpose of a developers page would be to make the language more 
friendly to developers who might consider working with the language. Devon 
thought that J for C programmers provides a good style of approach and that 
could be developed into how J can accommodate approaches that other languages 
might take. 

4) Other constituencies the wiki could address might be managers who wanted to 
know about J. The more general question of 'Should I Use J' that could be aimed 
at a general audience and may be more appropriate on the main page. Another 
candidate for the main page may be a notice board that would replace the news 
page. A notice board could be used for announcements and would not require the 
amount of curation that a news page requires. 

5) Bob then showed a script that he was working on to make it easier to create 
templates for wiki pages and the navigation bars. It is a form in jQt that 
allows the user to make choices of which links and format to put into the wiki 
page. This should make the transition to the new wiki easier to accomplish. 

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development  

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 24:00 (UTC) Next meeting is December 15th, 
2022.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of the J Wiki Meeting of 2022-11-24

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

1) We began by looking at an adjustment that Raul had made to the sidebar that 
allowed the the user to go from the prototype wiki to the corresponding page on 
the current wiki https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/MediaWiki:Sidebar. This is an 
addition to the link that sends us to the main or home page. We debated the 
name for this button and in the end decided to replace the link that takes us 
to the home page with one which will take us to the corresponding page. We did 
this with both wikis, so now the behaviour is to jump between corresponding 
pages, as this is the preferred behaviour. 
https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page

2) Bob showed the J Code Search Bar 
https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/J_Code_Search which is html which are placed 
with absolute values to the top of the wiki. Bob was wondering if there could 
be a bot that would put this search bar on every page, so that every page would 
have a search bar, even if they did not have a navigation bar. Raul was able to 
create the same Search Bar, but put it above the page content in the position 
for Site Notice content https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice. 
It took most of the rest of the session to get the CSS and the positioning 
correct. The advantage of doing the J Code Search bar this way is that it is 
not part of the content which means that new pages created do not have to add 
it in their creation process. We found that Bob doesn't have access to the CSS 
on the wiki, which may need to be rectified in the future. Bob also needed to 
find out if he could lock the navigation bars into place with absolute 
positioning if the J Code Search Bar is not providing that absolute reference 
position. (Bob was able to show that this is possible after the meeting). Raul 
felt we should think about this in the next week, to make sure that it did not 
have other consequences, such as affecting the space for site notices.

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development  

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 24:00 (UTC) Next meeting is December 1st, 
2022.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] The new episode of the ArrayCast features John Earnest, k programmer

['robert therriault' via General]

In this episode, we talk to John Earnest, creator of the ok.js k6 interpreter 
and an expert on k programming, about many aspects of array programming, 
including the relationship between k and Forth. 

Host: Conor Hoekstra

Guest: John Earnest

Panel:  Marshall Lochbaum, Adám Brudzewsky, Stephen Taylor and Bob Therriault.

https://www.arraycast.com/episodes/episode41-john-earnest
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of J Wiki Meeting of November 17, 2022

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, Devon McCormick, Raul Miller, and Bob Therriault

1) We looked at Art's index to the Essays which now includes difficulty levels. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Anger/Essays_Index Difficulty was assigned 
subjectively and might be adjusted by other's input over time. Then a 
discussion about whether there might be a way to have multiple pages of indices 
into Essays, which would allow different views of the essays, either by 
difficulty, category or alphabetic. This is probably aspirational. The initial 
prototype has been alphabetic, but the working copy is most likely to be done 
by category. The prototype also features characteristics that span across 
essays which are known by more than one name. 

2) Raul initiated a discussion on how to extract information from the wiki 
pages either from html or the view source on the wiki page. View source is 
usually preferred and J primitives can be created to manipulate the text files. 
There are times that manual changes can be effective if the occurence of 
changes is rare.  

3) We investigated the rebuild pages for the Essays to create a list of links 
that are then manipulated into alphabetical columns of the essay pages within a 
table. Raul then showed the J code that is used to build the wiki. He was given 
access to this through the process of migrating documents from jsoftware.com to 
the wiki .

4) Bob showed the work that he had done with the navigation bars and the search 
bar which now includes the J Code Search and Nuvoc and the page map. 
https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page This is all part of creating a more 
organized front end that will function as the wiki for most of the users. The 
archived pages will include the information that has not been modernized for 
display in the front end that is organized by the navigation bars. As time goes 
on archived pages may be promoted to the front end as user require it. The 
initial change to the current wiki would be to create the front end similar to 
the prototype wiki and then over time make updates as either new information or 
promoted material from the archived pages is added to the front end. Raul 
suggested that we want to get this in good enough shape to deploy and then 
throw a bunch of high school kids at it to see what the reaction is. 

5) Devon asked about how the NYCJUG meetings would be added to the wiki and 
whether they need to be updated if they are going to be archived. It was felt 
that there is useful information in the techniques and the fact that it would 
make sense to put it in the Community area because it is history of a user 
group. The code might be brought forward to other areas over time, but the raw 
material would stay in the NYCJUG subsection.

6) Bob sees that NuVoc will have a prominent roll in the front end especially 
if it is coupled to the J Playground where links could provide interactive 
examples to allow more user discovery. 

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development  

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 24:00 (UTC) Next meeting is November 24th, 
2022.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Corrected link for Arraycast

['robert therriault' via General]

Apologies for the noise, but the correct url for the podcast episode should be 
https://www.arraycast.com/episodes/episode40-michal-wallace

Cheers, bob
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Michal Wallace of 1010data is the guest on the new episode of the ArrayCast podcast

['robert therriault' via General]

In this episode, we talk to Michal Wallace AKA tangentstorm, a k3 programmer 
for 1010data who also produces videos about J.

Host: Conor Hoekstra

Guest: Michal Wallace

Panel:  Marshall Lochbaum, Adám Brudzewsky, Stephen Taylor and Bob Therriault.

https://www.arraycast.com/episodes/episode40-Michal-Wallace
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of J Wiki Group meeting of November 10, 2022

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, Devon McCormick and Bob Therriault

1) Bob reviews the suggestions that Art has provided on the structure of the 
prototype wiki https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page.

Bob--
Please consider revisions on several pages, as listed below.  Thanks.
--Art
--
a) https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page/Reference 
Identify and link to "J wiki team".
Not able to find the instance of "J wiki team", but agreed that the About Wiki 
page should be made more prominent for feedback. At time of producing this 
report the reference has been found and the email link has been added.

b) Eliminate overlap of navigational boxes.
Change to navigational boxes made

c) https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page/Newcomers Learning and 
Installation should most logically come after playground (in either order)--in 
all listings.
Changes made to that navigation bar  

d) https:?? (vertical list of screen-wide main categories) Begin with a table 
of contents, because most are initially offscreen.
May be done by making a collapsible sidebar.

e) https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Nav/Newcomers I haven't figured out how to 
remove the border of the empty box after "Home".  (We could just use 
colspan=6.)I don't see the value of doubling the file count by having a 
separate Nav page for each topic page.  One page can contain a few sample lines 
to be copied (and perhaps edited) into relevant locations.
Nav Bars would just be on the top 4 levels of the wiki. Cleaned up with the 
extra lines by setting borders to none on the main table.

f)https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page/JPlayground Use the word 
"Terminal", or 'Display", in place of ambiguous "Term".
Term refers to the name in Playground. It may be a good idea to change to 
Terminal. JQt uses term for some of its commands, but calling it Terminal feels 
more correct. We'll see what the J playground team thinks about this.
 
g)Show "Play" instead of scary 
"https://jsoftware.github.io/j-playground/bin/html2/;.
Probably should be done by using footnotes as has been done on the main page

h)The file display should not be an active link;  the picture is not what the 
newcomer is trying to go to. 
https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/File:JPlayground.png 
https://code2.jsoftware.com/mediawiki/images/e/e3/JPlayground.png The display 
should be labeled as an inactive portrayal, not the playground. High 
magnification by a single click is likely a nuisance for most users. Ctl-click 
would be a less intrusive feature.
Change made to make the image non-clickable 

2) Discussion of whether the "J Code Search bar should be at the top of the 
page above the breadcrumb navigation bars. It is something that Bob will look 
at as it would make it more conducive to narrower screens. 

3) Bob also showed that the depth of the breadcrumbs had been reduced by one 
level by avoiding a duplication of the parent page and the overview placeholder.

4) Devon plans to continue working on the NYCJUG content as there is a great 
deal of useful content within those meetings. Devon also mentioned a discussion 
that had happened at the most recent NYCJUG meeting about the balance between 
education and evangelism. He also talked about having more advanced material 
that would be able to support developers. Something along the line of Nick 
Psaris' books on q. 
https://www.amazon.ca/Tips-Fast-Scalable-Maintainable-Kdb/dp/9881389909 

5) Art will continue to work on assigning levels of expertise to the essays as 
a way to further categorize 
levels.https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Essays/Newcomers  The big challenge of 
this is to create a useful grading system that does not require too much 
curation. If this balance can be hit, it may be a very useful model for similar 
challenges in different sections of the wiki. It may also be possible to divide 
the difficulties across different categories, so that a difficult math essay 
might also be an easy programming essay. 

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development  

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 24:00 (UTC) Next meeting is November 17th, 
2022.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of the J wiki group meeting of November 3, 2022

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, Raul Miller and Bob Therriault

1) Bob apologizes for another meeting miss last week due to connectivity issues.

2) Raul mentions updating an undocumented foreign and suggests that he will 
continue to make updates to foreigns as he spots them. Bob mentions that he 
knows of another foreign that involves text output during a session. Raul 
expresses concern about the size of the Foreigns page and possible difficulties 
in updating specific areas. We will keep an eye on this to see if it starts to 
create issues. https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Vocabulary/Foreigns

3) Bob demonstrates the changes that he has made to the nav bars  on his new 
wiki area using CSS and HTML https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/J_Code_Search 
instead of tables https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Nav/Newcomers/Learn, which 
were used for Chris Burke's nav bars. Bob finds that changing these is easier 
because the table formatting is condensed, but is harder to find the edit 
areas. Raul points out that there are combinations of | and LF in the wiki 
which will allow for easier formatting of table code. Bob was not aware of this 
and will problem revert to tables since there are tricks that must be used with 
HTML and CSS in order to display properly. CSS can be used to remove 
breadcrumbs which allows the nav bars to remain in position at the top of the 
page. Bob has also expanded the J code search bar to include a site map and 
Nuvoc.  This will be displayed on each path. Raul suggests that we rename Site 
Map to Page Map because Site Map https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/J_Code_Search 
suggests that the whole site is up to date and that is an issue because new 
pages would need to be curated before they were put into position. Page Map 
would just be the pages that are at the top levels of the wiki that would have 
nav bars. https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Site_Map

4) Art talked about assigning levels of expertise to the essays as a way to 
further categorize levels.https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Essays/Newcomers He 
suggests doing a decimal point for differentiating within difficulty levels. 
Bob says he could use the Essay difficulty to show only levels 1 and 2 to 
newcomers and all Essays would show up on the Reference area. Art would like to 
do this with pretty fine gradation and this could be a complicated process if 
there were essays that had simple J and complicated math and Art says the 
result would be a complex number! Raul points out that complex numbers can be 
sorted although Ceiling and Floor are outside of the domain. Bob learns 
something! We decide that decimal point designations may be difficult but a 
five point scale would be useful. 

5) A discussion about how to transition to updating the wiki. Bob thinks that 
nav bars can be added and then attached fairly quickly. The CSS to remove bread 
crumbs could be added by a bot. The work becomes getting the right pages to 
attach to the nav bars and finally to do a forward from the existing main page 
to the new  main page. We may need to look out for redirect limits, but this 
may be able to be controlled by jumping back a redirect to reduce the number of 
redirects in a path using short circuits. In the next few weeks we will be 
opening up to feedback on the structure of the wiki in advance to making these 
changes.

6) When the J Playground url is made permanent we can be begin to crowdsource 
people to enter links in NuVoc to provide clickable examples.

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development 

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 24:00 (UTC) Next meeting is November 10th, 
2022.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Episode 39 of the ArrayCast is available

['robert therriault' via General]

Iversonian language or Array language?

In this episode, we what makes an an array language an Iversonian array 
language and discover many other languages along the way.

Host: Conor Hoekstra

Panel:  Marshall Lochbaum, Adám Brudzewski, Stephen Taylor and Bob Therriault.

https://www.arraycast.com/episodes/episode39-iverson-or-array-language
--
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[Jgeneral] Report on the J Wiki Meeting of October 20, 2022

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, Raul Miller and Bob Therriault

1) Bob showed some of the work he has been doing on the wiki structure. 
https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page He has been using an ability to 
rename pages as a way to make navigation easier, since the file structure shows 
up if the page is not renamed which is a problem when you have content brought 
together from different parts of the wiki. Bob was still working on removing 
the breadcrumbs from the pages which have a similar problem with exposing the 
file structure. 

2) Bob want so use Nav Bars https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Nav/Main on main 
pages down to certain level, but not for every page since that would make it 
too difficult to have other people add pages. Nav Bars on the main pages should 
not have to change very much because at that level there are not too many 
changes other than tweaks to content. 

3) Bob is working through a problem with having different content for different 
areas. For example, the Newcomers version of Essays would be different than the 
full Reference version of Essays. This would mean that there would need to be 
more curation on the Newcomers section to ensure that the information is 
appropriate for learning the language. Raul suggested that Bob talk to Henry 
Rich and Cliff Reiter to use their experience with teaching learners. Bob also 
felt that Ian Clark would be a good resource.  

4) Bob and Raul discussed using the Archived folder 
https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Archived as a repository for expired pages and 
Raul suggested the  orphan pages are good candidates for Archived.

5) Raul walked Bob through the process of clearing the cache on his wiki pages 
to update the favicon icons on the tabs.

6) Bob had also been doing work on the Add-ons section and included a 
Developer's Checklist that he updated from the SVN repository version to the 
new Github version. https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Addons/Developers_Checklist

7) Bob's next step is to develop the Essay section similar to the way that the 
Add-ons was done. He would plan to include the work that Art had done on Essays 
as an index to the Essay groupings. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Anger/Essays_Index


For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development 

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is October 27th, 
2022.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

Re: [Jgeneral] Significant change wrt Rank from J805 to J903?

['robert therriault' via General]

The original example was

(>1 0 1; 1 1 0; 0 1 1 ) #"_ 1 > 1 2 3;4 5 6

I think that Raul was using ; in place of # for illustrative purposes.

   (>1 0 1; 1 1 0; 0 1 1 ) ;"_ 1 > 1 2 3;4 5 6 NB. J805

┌─┬─┐
│1 0 1│1 2 3│
│1 1 0│ │
│0 1 1│ │
├─┼─┤
│1 0 1│4 5 6│
│1 1 0│ │
│0 1 1│ │
└─┴─┘

(>1 0 1; 1 1 0; 0 1 1 ) #"_ 1 > 1 2 3;4 5 6 NB. J805
|length error
|   (>1 0 1;1 1 0;0 1 1)#"_ 1>1 2 3;4 5 6

The behaviour that I see in J903 is far more useful and feels more consistent.

(>1 0 1; 1 1 0; 0 1 1 ) #"_ 1 > 1 2 3;4 5 6 NB. J903
1 3
1 2
2 3

4 6
4 5
5 6

Cheers, bob
> On Oct 22, 2022, at 09:31, Henry Rich  wrote:
> 
> I get
> 
>(>1 0 1; 1 1 0; 0 1 1 ) ;"_ 1 > 1 2 3;4 5 6
> 
> +-+-+
> |1 0 1|1 2 3|
> |1 1 0| |
> |0 1 1| |
> +-+-+
> |1 0 1|4 5 6|
> |1 1 0| |
> |0 1 1| |
> +-+-+
> 
> Henry Rich
> 
> On 10/22/2022 12:17 PM, Raul Miller wrote:
>> When I inspect the arguments being applied here
>> 
>>(>1 0 1; 1 1 0; 0 1 1 ) ;"_ 1 > 1 2 3;4 5 6
>> 
>> I see no reason for a length error.
>> 
> 
> --
> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

--
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[Jgeneral] Report of the J wiki meeting of October 13, 2022

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, and Bob Therriault

1) Bob and Art talked about using redirects to reorganize the wiki and whether 
there is an issue with having two pages that have similar information. If one 
was in an Archived folder the other could be in a live folder that might be 
updated. This would address the problem of unarchiving a page that had been 
archived by mistake. This would mean that the redirect would follow the live 
page and the Archived page would only be seen by a user by searching the wiki 

2) Bob talked about approaches that other array languages have used for 
documentation, as it was a discussion on the most recent episode of ArrayCast. 
https://www.arraycast.com/episodes/episode38-array-language-profile  BQN which 
has very good documentation done by Marshall Lochbaum was the result of 
hundreds of hours working on it. Marshall also talked about the importance of 
including examples that show the function of a primitive being used in 
unexpected ways. He also spoke about the importance of including simple 
examples first for those users who are looking for a refresher and then 
including more complicated examples to show the variety of applications. 
Richard Park from Dyalog talked about doing documentation of very simple things 
that a developer would need to know to get an application working. This avoids 
the problem of having a language which is used for code golfing or leetcode but 
rarely used for practical purposes, which is a problem that some people have 
suggested that J has. Conor Hoekstra spoke in the podcast about the 
functionality of Rust Up in Rust which will construct the infrastructure of an 
application and this may be a path to take for Add-ons and making them easier 
for people to contribute. 

3) Bob and Art discussed the email response of Tom McGuire about how he had 
used Jupyter notebooks. Tom's User page 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/User:Tom_McGuire/JJupyterNotebooks 

Tom's email: 
Just like to mention that I was working with the Jupyter notebook interface 
pioneered by Martin Saurer and I adapted my own Binder launch script based on 
Joe Bogner’s jkernel-docker for Binder.

Both of the aforementioned have github sites that have the code:
Martin: https://github.com/martin-saurer/jkernel 

Joe: https://github.com/joebo/jkernel-docker 


Jupyter notebook runs in a browser and needs a server to control the session. 
Using Martin’s original kernel I would run the server that comes with the 
Anaconda python distribution locally on my machine.  With the Binder website 
you can now launch Jupyter notebook files directly out of a repository on 
GitHub. This allows anyone to share the file. 

For those who are unfamiliar with Jupyter it is similar to running J or python 
under an emacs editing session. All user entry is in text editing boxes that 
get executed either by J,  python, or the  underlying markup  language. It is 
kind of an executable wiki. Even  though code  may be entered in separate text 
editing  boxes they are all controlled by one J process so global nouns and 
function definitions are usable throughout the Jupyter  page you are editing.

Jupyter notebooks are extensively used in the Python community especially by 
the BigData/Data Analysis folks 

4) Wrapped up with the plan to develop the yellow wiki as a prototype for 
people to explore by the end of October and then have the changes implemented 
through the month of November on the blue wiki. After that it will be more 
maintenance and developing a team so that there is a division of labour in this 
large project.  

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development 

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is October 20th, 
2022.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of the J wiki Group meeting of October 6, 2022

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, Raul Miller, Bob Therriault

1) Bob apologized for last meeting not happening due to campsite connectivity. 
Art asked about the future of J and Bob indicated that there may be a push to 
making J more accessible to developers.

2) Bob talked about making a more accessible way to sign up for the wiki, 
similar to the APLwiki 
https://aplwiki.com/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin=Main+Page , 
using some kind of a 'J' question to protect from spam. Users would be able to 
enter their own user name and password without having to go through 
confirmation through email. There is currently a similar situation for posting 
emails where an anti-spam question is used to confirm the video link. Raul 
mentioned that Rosetta code was seeing a lot of accounts added that never 
participated and they instituted a policy that any user that signed up and did 
not participate within 24 hours they would have their membership to the wiki 
deleted. This may be a solution if the problem shows up in the J wiki. 

3) Bob explained that the plan is to discontinue the yellow wiki 
https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page by the end of November and it will 
be replaced by a smaller instance for testing php bots without affecting the 
main wiki https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page. The yellow wiki will be 
used to stage the upcoming changes for comment through the end of October  and 
then through November the changes will be instituted on the blue wiki. As much 
as possible current information will be retained, although the structure will 
be changed to accommodate better navigation. Raul thought that the reduced form 
of the wiki would suffice because he can stage the testing of page at at time 
bots without affecting the wiki.

4) There was some discussion about the use of Jupyter notebooks Jupyter 
notebooks https://jupyter.org/  within the J environment. Raul mentioned that 
there is a barrier to entry in learning Jupyter and Bob pointed out that there 
have been a lot of people who have already crossed the barrier. Raul wondered 
whether there could be a J version of Jupyter with Jupyter as the IDE. Bob 
mentioned that Thomas McGuire had been doing work creating Jupyter instances 
that linked to the J engine 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/User:Tom_McGuire/JJupyterNotebooks. Raul 
pointed out that the J console does not have a script editor, but if the 
Jupyter environment had a text editor this might be used. Raul felt that as 
long as you have a way to advance a lab then the J labs should be able to be 
run in other environments. 

5) Bob talked about the ongoing challenge of organizing the add ons and the 
education which might be used to encourage developers to use add ons. Art felt 
that it should be easier to develop add ons. Raul said that someone should go 
through the documentation and get feedback on the areas that are pinch points 
in the process. Bob wondered if videos or labs could be used to guide the user 
to develop add ons. Perhaps something along the lines of the J602 Lab Author 
lab. 

6) Bob wondered if the labs may also benefit from a navigation upgrade similar 
to the way that Essays are currently being handled with categories and an index 
that may be more searchable. 

7) Art asked if there was a way to lock the header when scrolling through 
tables. The closest that was bound was defining a second one line table of 
headings above the table. The functionality that would be required is to make 
the columns sortable without affecting the position of the header, but this 
would require more investigation.  


For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development 

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is October 13th, 
2022.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of J Wiki Meeting of September 22, 2022

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, Devon McCormick, Raul Miller, Bob Therriault

1) Bob showed the work that he had done on the navigation of the add-ons that 
suggested a clearer distinction between user, developer and reference material. 
https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/JAL/User_Guide  the primary work is the 
navigation bar which will allow a quicker access to the information. There will 
be further work required in order to be able to frame the information 
appropriately.  Raul suggested that a vertical orientation that would be closer 
to the dropdown menu model. Art pointed out that using add-ons to install the 
base library does not seem appropriate for something that would usually work 
with add-ons. Art suggested a wrapper verb that would allow the base library to 
be installed by a verb with a different name. Maybe as simple as install=: 
'install'

2) Art talked about his table of Essays 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Anger/Essays_Index and the fact that he had 
added some Advent of Code entries to the table, as they are pertinent to the 
essays https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Anger/AoC Bob suggested that Advent of 
Code might also be a category. Art wondered if people would know what AOC 
meant. 

3) Bob welcomed input into what he would present to the J meeting on the 
weekend. Art asked if there were to be more verbs and adverbs added. That lead 
to a discussion about the way that J displayed information, but that there 
seemed to be a focus on threading and the new verbs involving that.  

4) Bob wondered whether a pure wiki is the approach that should be used for 
documentation. Raul pointed out that the original wiki had some pages that were 
locked. Bob thought that fit with his ideas where upper levels might be more 
rigid and lower levels more flexible. That the wiki becomes a bit more of 
curated information like a library than a heap of information. Raul pointed out 
that many J users were pretty informed and that the locking might not be so 
necessary. Bob thought that the navigation structure might be locked down for 
most users and content pages remain open. The work in that would be in 
restructuring and the content that would be required to bridge. Old pages that 
do not fit in would be searchable but not navigable  because they may not show 
up in the navigation. The content that Chris was looking for was ways to make 
it easier for people to create add-ons. Curation of the add-ons would be a 
challenge because of the level of understanding that is required for an 
accurate synopsis. 

5) Bob also talked about developing other tools like Jalopy, J's version of 
aplcart that would support the wiki https://aplcart.info. Even Nuvoc might be 
split off to allow a different approach to the distribution of information. A 
lot of the time the information is not being changed as much as it is being 
pruned. Raul mentioned that we may not want to change tools if it means 
abandoning other tools. The concern was that a tool may require a different url 
and a different maintenance team to keep it active. 

6) Raul suggested that people may not be repelled by hard concepts and used 
Rust as an example where there may be a lot of people willing to do the work to 
get secure code and communities develop where there is a need addressed. Bob 
pointed out that there is also a momentum that languages like COBOL have where 
they become entrenched and maintenance is now the driving force. Raul pointed 
out that the array languages have a strong connection to math, but that is not 
always a positive for the general population. There may be more interest in a 
language that is an aid to problem solving.

7) Bob will be travelling the next Thursday so invitations will be sent out for 
the September 29th meeting if he has enough internet connectivity.  


For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development 

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is September 29th, 
2022.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

Re: [Jgeneral] [Jbeta] Error in new wiki

['robert therriault' via General]

Hi Don,

The J code search has an error in the (yellow) prototype wiki when there is a 
search for a page that does not exist. The (blue) current wiki does have a 
working J code search. Thank you for testing and reporting the error. As Chris 
has noted, it may not be fixed in the yellow wiki until we merge the two sites, 
which I would expect to be later this fall.

Cheers, bob

> On Sep 26, 2022, at 7:21 AM, bill lam  wrote:
> 
> Don meant the yellow wiki
> 
> https://code2.jsoftware.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Special%3AJwikiSearch=hqt+function+keys
> 
> 
> On Mon, 26 Sep 2022 at 7:14 AM Don Guinn  wrote:
> 
>> MOved to General Forum
>> 
>> After sending this note I reran the request and it worked. But this was
>> from the normal search control. It failed from a control on the left side
>> of the screen just after entering the new wiki.
>> 
>> On Mon, Sep 26, 2022 at 8:01 AM Raul Miller  wrote:
>> 
>>> When I visit
>>> 
>> https://code.jsoftware.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Special%3AJwikiSearch=hqt+function+keys
>>> I do not get this error.
>>> 
>>> (That said, this might be more of an issue for the general forum than
>>> the beta forum, since this is not a j beta issue.)
>>> 
>>> FYI,
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Raul
>>> 
>>> On Mon, Sep 26, 2022 at 9:35 AM Don Guinn  wrote:
 
 Die a search for jqt function keys
 
 
 942e90ea9bb6fb0ecb882b9a]
 /mediawiki/index.php?title=Special%3AJwikiSearch=hqt+function+keys
 Error from line 66 of
 /var/www/html/mediawiki/extensions/JwikiSearch/SpecialJwikiSearch.php:
>>> Call
 to undefined method OutputPage::addWikiText()
 
 Backtrace:
 
 #0 /var/www/html/mediawiki/includes/specialpage/SpecialPage.php(600):
 SpecialJwikiSearch->execute()
 #1
 
>> /var/www/html/mediawiki/includes/specialpage/SpecialPageFactory.php(635):
 SpecialPage->run()
 #2 /var/www/html/mediawiki/includes/MediaWiki.php(307):
 MediaWiki\SpecialPage\SpecialPageFactory->executePath()
 #3 /var/www/html/mediawiki/includes/MediaWiki.php(945):
 MediaWiki->performRequest()
 #4 /var/www/html/mediawiki/includes/MediaWiki.php(548):
>> MediaWiki->main()
 #5 /var/www/html/mediawiki/index.php(53): MediaWiki->run()
 #6 /var/www/html/mediawiki/index.php(46): wfIndexMain()
 #7 {main}
 --
 For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
>>> --
>>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
>>> 
>> --
>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
>> 
> --
> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

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[Jgeneral] Report of J wiki group meeting of September 15th, 2022

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, Raul Miller, Bob Therriault

1) The meeting opened with Art walking us through his table view of the essays 
with collapsible sections that can be searched alphabetically and ordered by 
columns for Title, Source, Applications,and Operations. 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Anger/Essays_Index 

2) Essays with multiple names are a bit of a challenge because if you sort a 
column you will lose the connection between the Source and the Title for cases 
where there are multiple tiles from the same source.

3) Raul has started work on a spider bot that will be able to transfer 
categories from the prototype wiki to the current wiki and this seems very 
doable. Tom McGuire has continued to categorize Essays and his work is very 
much appreciated. 

4) Bob suggested that he was interested in developing a J version of APLcart 
https://aplcart.info/  as an updated version of Phrases. APLcart is a 
searchable database with links to documentation and to the web based user 
interfaces so it is easy to see the phrase in action as well as an explanation 
of what it does. Raul suggested calling the J version of the APLcart a Jalopy. 

5) Bob also gave developing the add ons structure as his second project for the 
fall. There seems to be information that is spread over a number of other 
areas. JAL https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/JAL/User_Guide Pacman 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Pacman and Vocabulary/Libraries 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Vocabulary/Libraries  Bob suggests separating 
the topics into User Guide, Developer Guide and Library all under the main 
section of Add Ons. User Guide would focus on functionality of the application 
for users, Developer Guide would focus on how to create add ons and 
requirements, and Library as a list of add ons accessible through Pacman. 
Because information is stored in different sections it may be confusing to 
users when they see similar information to what they have seen before, but that 
is stored in a completely different section. Art mentioned that add ons can be 
difficult to develop and is there an easier way to develop add ons. Bob said he 
would look for ways that the process may be made simpler. A lot of this may be 
about doing more education through the Developer Guide pages. Bob wondered if 
there was an opportunity to do some type of a linting application that would 
check that the add on file was ready to publish and that if all was okay then 
it would do a dot version increment to make the add on publishable. Add ons 
have a lot of potential to transfer scripts from GitHub using 'install' jpg 
'filename' but this is an opportunity to educate the users.

5) Bob talked about whether the wiki meetings might be used as updates for the 
different projects in addition to the general discussion. Raul mentioned that 
having achievable milestones is an important part of the project and those 
milestones seem to be have been set on a individual basis. There are more 
opportunities to work collaboratively and have project potentially spin off 
into their own development similar to the way that the J playground developed.

6) Art wondered about ways of adding Categories on the the table and include 
the current categories of the essays. This could be useful through sorting the 
column where the main category would be first and the sub categories would be 
available to show how other users may have categorized the essays that may be 
helpful in future searches. Also you could have categories as links to the 
category pages so that if you clicked on a category would you be able to take 
you to the category page where all the pages using that category. Art has 
include an Operation column with links that will take you directly to Nuvoc 
page. Similar things might be done with some of the topics that might be able 
to link back to wikipedia for descriptions that the user may not know. The 
Application column could be used for the main category with a category column 
for the sub categories. Raul pointed out that this would involve a lot of work 
updating the table whenever a category is changed. Bob suggested that once the 
Essays are categorized there may not be a lot of updating that is required. 

7) In areas that are work intensive, it is up to the wiki team to motivate 
users to contribute. The challenge is to make sure that we are using that 
resource of community involvement in ways that are of most benefit. This will 
be an ongoing challenge of the wiki development. 

8) Next Thursday will be the last J wiki meeting prior to the Fall Jsoftware 
meeting in Victoria, so any thing that should be brought up in Victoria can be 
explored on the J wiki meeting of September 22nd.  


For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development 

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on 

[Jgeneral] Report on the meeting of the J wiki group of September 08, 2022

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, Raul Miller, Bob Therriault

1) The meeting opened with a discussion on what might be good targets for the 
fall wiki improvements. Bob talked about content based projects such as Essay 
categorization https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Essays/Cat , structural changes 
such as the main pages https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page  or the add 
ons, and bot development in maintenance or search engines. Additionally, there 
could be an option to develop the Phrases area in a way that would bring it 
closer to the APLcart.https://aplcart.info/  Bob also mentioned the J 
Playground as an area that is wiki adjacent that has greatly expanded the 
potential of J. Targets for the fall could be higher profile, but that does not 
exclude foundational changes that are necessary to move forward.

2) The APLcart is an interesting project because the tags have already been 
developed and it would be a matter of writing a phrase that would be 
conventional J and possibly an option optimized for speed and one optimized for 
space. The classic J option might be best to give a sense of J style to 
newcomers and the other two might be better for production code. The question 
of tacit or explicit came up and it might be best to supply both because 
explicit can make it easier for many coders to understand.

3) Art wondered about the possibility of putting the add ons into a spreadsheet 
to enhance the search. Raul pointed out that spreadsheets allow the data to be 
accessed in a partial format rather than requiring all the information. 

4)Bob mentioned that Rich Park had asked about Search Engine Optimization in 
Nuvoc after looking for Raze in the wiki and not finding much appropriate 
information. It may be a good idea to add tags into the Nuvoc pages that at 
least incorporate the name of the primitive into the SEO and maybe give 
priority to the tags as the J wiki search engine develops and may prioritize 
tagged pages so that Nuvoc pages are amongst the top hits in the search with 
additional hits placed lower in the list. 

5) Art talked about his projects involved developing content for developers. 
His project might be to start developing spreadsheets that might make the 
categories more accessible to the users. If the users don't have a way to know 
the categories it becomes more difficult to make the search effective. Art also 
mentioned that it might be a good idea to have a site map. Bob wondered if 
there was a way to do that sort of thing in a way that was automated, something 
like Eric's webcrawler, https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Eric_Iverson/Site_Map  
but perhaps one that crawled with a navigation priority so that the bot crawls 
in a way that reflects the navigational structure of the wiki for the user. Art 
wondered if there were a way to identify the pages that have gone longest with 
out an update which might provide information that is useful. 

5) Bob talked about working with the add ons to create a structure starting 
small and expanding in a way that reduces the complexity. Thinking more about a 
site map, Bob thought it might be an idea to have a site map that is curated to 
take you to the level of the navigation bars and let the navigation bars form 
the next level of navigation. The site map and the structure of the wiki would 
be meant to take the user to the level of a navigation bar which at that level 
the navigation bars could link to different areas of the wiki based on the user 
needs rather than the current structure of the wiki which is more organic and 
does not always reflect user needs. The navigation bar level of structure might 
also be candidates for tags so that those results are given higher priority in 
the search. 

6) Bob reiterated that it would be good to have 2 or three projects that we aim 
to complete before Christmas as it would be good to start to show quantifiable 
results because that may energize participation in the community that would be 
necessary for larger wiki changes. Art said that he would explore the wiki 
table option, with the idea of using the ideas discovered in table generation 
across the greater wiki. Bob thought if he was working on two it would be the 
add on structure and APLcart. A third project would be to support the wiki 
development and these meetings and video updates. Going forward it would be a 
good idea to find areas that you would like to work on and I would welcome 
approaching targets as a group which could be supported by some of these Zoom 
sessions. 


For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development 

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is September 15th, 
2022.

--
For information about J forums see 

[Jgeneral] Report on the J wiki Meeting of September 1st, 2022

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, Devon McCormick, Raul Miller, Bob Therriault

1) Bob spoke about the categorization of Essays and commended Thomas McGuire, 
Paul Jackson and Devon McCormick for their work in categorizing some of the 
essays. 
https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Special:RecentChanges?hidebots=1=100=30=1=2
  Bob had also noticed that Categories can have words separated that makes them 
a bit more searchable. The example of 'Extended Precision' was given and it was 
noted by Raul that some terms could span across different contexts. Bob 
mentioned that with the upcoming improvement in the search engine that allows 
searches based on categories should be able to restrict context. Bob mentioned 
that all the essays should probably have the [[Category: Essay]] tag although 
that may be best populated by a bot across areas like essays or specific books 
such as "50 shades of J"

2) A discussion of addons structure and it is certainly a mixed up structure at 
the moment. The JAL Guide https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/JAL/User_Guide has 
some good information, but addons are accessed through the Package Manager in 
JQt, Pacman in JHS and across different pages in the wiki including the 
Vocabulary/Library https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Vocabulary/Libraries . Bob 
suggests creating a prototype structure that is more consistent in the Yellow 
wiki before doing the changes in the Blue wiki. Links within the wiki could be 
updated but external links would need to be accommodated through redirects. Bob 
will take look at that in the next week and try to create a flatter more 
accessible structure. The suggestion would be to use the name addons to 
consistently refer to them and if this were to be approved may be used 
consistently across the menus and pop ups of the different environments.

3) Devon mentioned that he had been looking to put some of his scripts into an 
add-on, but had run into issues with having the required files showing up in 
the different files so that the user would be able to run them consistently. 
Bob mentioned that he had used a meta file that would choose between different 
versions of the Jig add-on depending on the versions of J.

4) Bob showed a curated set of bookmarks and other media links that he had put 
together on his user page https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/User:Bob_Therriault. 
Future improvements could be made to create collapsible lists and reordering 
the list. Bob then showed what Ian Clark had done with his user page using 
tables https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/User:Ian_Clark, which look a bit more 
ordered. Art pointed out that tables can take more space. Devon remarked that 
they do look nice. Raul mentioned the we might create the effect of a table 
with Css and not have some of the mark up overhead that can come with a table. 
Devon found that the tables are sortable. A second question is how much to we 
want to regulate the structure of the User pages. Consistency makes it much 
easier for users to find the information. It may be a case of educating 
curators to have an approach that is easy to access and encouraging consistency 
without enforcing it. Better organized information will increase the influence 
of the curator and perhaps this will be enough to generate consistency.

5) Devon asked if it was time to make stronger calls to action for the essay 
categorization since we now have  a specific task and organization that seems 
to support it fairly well. Getting the larger group involved would be a good 
next step from what we have seen from the success of the first group that begun 
the process. Bob will build a stronger call to action in the text that 
announced the next video update on the forums.

6) Bob initiated a discussion about the success of array languages based on the 
podcast episode with Lib Gibson 
https://www.arraycast.com/episodes/episode35-lib-gibson, who follows the 
philosophy of Clay Christensen and the Innovators Dilemma. The array languages 
may have focussed too much on the powerful applications that are used in 
industry at the expense of widening the community that might find a very 
powerful calculator a compelling tool for math exploration. DragonBox 
https://dragonbox.com/products/algebra-12  was mentioned as an app that teaches 
algebra through simple interfaces that are create a physical sense of balancing 
equations in the user. Something similar might be used to encourage array style 
style thinking in the next generation. The J playground 
https://jsoftware.github.io/j-playground/bin/html2/  becomes a very interesting 
tool for widening the audience of the language.
 

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development 

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is September 8th, 
2022.

[Jgeneral] Lib Gibson is the guest for the 35th episode of the Array Cast podcast.

['robert therriault' via General]

In this episode, we talk to Lib Gibson about being the ‘Zookeeper’ for IP Sharp 
and Clay Christensen’s theory of disruption. 

Host: Conor Hoekstra

Guest: Lib Gibson

Panel:  Marshall Lochbaum, Adám Brudzewsky and Bob Therriault.

https://www.arraycast.com/episodes/episode35-lib-gibson

--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report on the J Wiki Group Meeting of August 25, 2022

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, Devon McCormick, Raul Miller, Bob Therriault

1) Bob talked about the recent increase in requests for wiki id's as a result 
of the recent videos. Also, note that the two wikis require separate request 
for id's for those who were not users when the yellow wiki was created. This 
will be mentioned in the next wiki update video. There are also issues with the 
confirmation emails being delivered consistently and at the time of of this 
writing Chris has cleared up the issue, which should reduce the barrier to new 
users.

2) A discussion of APLcart https://aplcart.info/ a specific search of 'how to' 
answers to solve common problems in APL https://aplwiki.com/wiki/APLcart. 
APLCart was developed by Adám Brudzewsky to alleviate the number of questions 
that he was asked and it is currently hooked to the workspaces of Dyalog, the 
APLwiki https://aplwiki.com/wiki/  and the RIDE online interface at tryAPL.org 
As people have trouble finding answers Adám updates the keywords to make 
APLCart more easily searchable. This may be a direction that Phrases may take 
on the wiki. BQN has already borrowed the concept with BQNcrate 
https://mlochbaum.github.io/bqncrate/

3) A discussion of the structure of add-ons. Raul reiterated Chris' observation 
from the previous meeting that it is important to have a well organized 
structure, so that new to the system can navigate easily and more experienced 
users have good access to add-ons that may be more specialized. Bob suggested 
that the analogy that he thinks of is a library. It has sections that are 
specific and it has sections that are general, such as reference sections. 
Within each section the texts are categorized by section then indexed within 
the section by a Dewey decimal system and can also be accessed through a 
general index. It allows wandering into a section and browsing within a 
category. This may be a useful model to consider when organizing the addons. 
Raul also suggested that it would be a good idea to have some sort of a 
template for add-on documentation, but it is also important that the template 
not lead to imprecise documentation.

4) Curated bookmarks still are intriguing as way for users to share their 
knowledge of the wiki structure through the bookmarks that they find useful. 
This will involve a lot of education of how to use bookmarks effectively with 
the wiki and then organize them in a way that is valuable to other users.

5) Bob mentioned that the J Add-on Library (JAL) 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/JAL/User_Guide is probably the best route for 
getting education how to work with the add-ons, while the vocabulary seems to 
have the best description of each add-on 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Vocabulary/Libraries, and Pacman is the menu 
that gives access to the addons that are installed through JAL. Github can also 
be used to supply addons, but if not in within the JAL the add-ons have to be 
done on an individual basis as they do not show up in the Pacman interface. 
Raul thought that there should be increased support for non JAL addons, so that 
private GitHub addons that had been used in the past would be able to updated 
easily through Pacman. Private add-ons would still need to be initially 
discovered outside of Pacman. 

6) Bob has put the J reference card https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/NuVoc 
developed by Viktor Grigorov on the top of the Nuvoc page and in the ancillary 
pages as well https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Guides/GettingStartedSerious. The 
format of the file is shown by the extension A4 or USLETTER

7) Raul mentioned that when the categories have been done on the yellow wiki 
that a bot could be used to transfer the categories to the blue wiki. 

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development 

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is September 1st, 
2022.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report on the J wiki Meeting of 2022-08-18

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, Chris Burke, Raul Miller, Bob Therriault

1) Bob talked about the video that he had posted on how to get involved in the 
wiki and help to categorize the essays 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2hsnuxK79c Bob also mentioned that some of the 
wiki instructions still referenced Moin Moin 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/EditingGuidelines#Reusing_Page_Name 

2) Chris addressed the issue of the Essays that had not been transferred across 
to the yellow wiki. This is a problem with content that was updated from Moin 
Moin, but had not been touched since upgrading the Mediawik version. Chirs 
indicated that he would take a look at it to see if it was an update that he 
could do. 

3) Chris asked about our plans for the yellow code2 wiki and how long we would 
be needing it. We suggested that we would use it as a place for experimenting 
before making the changes to the blue code wiki. We anticipate using it for the 
next year in this fashion, although as changes to the blue wiki become less 
obtrusive, we may not need the experimental area. 

4) Bob showed the list of essays that are not available on the code2 wiki 
marked with asterisks  https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Essays/Categorize and 
Chris noted that the information is actually there if you look at history, but 
it is not available for display.

5) Raul mentioned the issue with rebuilding the Essays on the update page that 
seems not to be working. https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Essays/Directory Chris 
said that he would look into it as it should be rebuilding more often than it 
is.

6) Bob asked whether there was any indication about whether books such as "50 
Shades of J" could be included in Essays and the way forward may be to just 
have entries from the chapters of the book show up in Essay links as well as as 
a link to the entire book. Categories in the end may be the best way to do a 
search. Chris said that the J wiki search should be able to be expanded to 
searching through categories and become smarter in the way that it narrowed 
down search content. The challenge that Chris has is that it is written in php 
and he is not an expert in it. Raul mentioned that he has worked as a php 
programmer, but there are challenges with making changes without taking down 
the whole system. This may be another reason to use the yellow code2 wiki for 
experimentation

7) Chris talked about the challenges facing the Add-on libraries 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Vocabulary/Libraries, Pacman 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Pacman and the JAL framework 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/JAL/User_Guide. You can access the add-ons 
documentation through the Vocabulary of Nuvoc, but it may be better moved to 
access through the JAL pages renamed as Add-ons. Private add-ons can be created 
on GitHub https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Pacman#github and then the link can 
be done through JQt with the install command if the code is in the right 
format. These are not available through the JAL or Pacman menus. Perhaps it 
would be a good idea to have some requirements for private add-ons in terms of 
documentation to support JAL distribution. Chris suggests that we may want to 
look at how R does its packages. 

8) Chris also mentioned that there is an educational opportunity with addons, 
so that people can know that this is a very powerful way to distribute J code 
and should be more publicized. Chris is looking for a knight in shining armour 
who might be willing to take on the addons and clean them up so that they are 
current and there is instruction to support new users who would like to create 
addons. The knight could be a group of people as well so any interest in this 
area would be welcome and getting in touch with the wiki group might be the 
best way to move forward with the project. 

9) Chris mentioned that for "50 Shades of J" there was work up front to provide 
the structure and this organization is something that would be required. JAL 
guides and Vocabulary Addons links are two areas that might provide a model for 
that organization. The search may also allow Archived categories that would 
only be used for deeper searches.

10) Bob suggested that the Essays categorization is good experiment that may 
proved information how to approach the add-ons and Chris said that the 
organization of the add-ons is the first step. 

11) Chris had previously mentioned that bookmarks are a good way to navigate. 
Bob mentioned that there had been discussions within the wik group of having 
users curate their bookmarks on their User pages so that they might be 
available to less experienced users. 

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development 

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is August 25th, 2022.

[Jgeneral] Romilly Cocking is the guest on this episode of the Array Cast

['robert therriault' via General]

In this episode of the Array Cast, we talk to Romilly Cocking about APL, 
Smalltalk, Python, Clojure and Pop2 . What is Pop2? Listen and find out.
Host: Conor Hoekstra
Guest: Romilly Cocking
Panel: Marshall Lochbaum, Richard Park, Stephen Taylor and Bob Therriault.
https://www.arraycast.com/episodes/episode34-romilly-cocking

Cheers, bob
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Video Wiki update and how to help categorize essays

['robert therriault' via General]

Hi everyone,

I just put out a new wiki update video that explains how you can join in the 
effort to categorize the J wiki essays and help make them easier to navigate.

Here is the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2hsnuxK79c

Included in the notes are links to the pages that you might need. 

You can both learn about the many things that J can do and help improve the 
wiki at the same time.

Enjoy

Cheers, bob
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] The Report of the J wiki meeting of August 11, 2022

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, Devon McCormick, Raul Miller, Bob Therriault

1) We started with a look at the page that Devon had put together called 
"Proposed Wiki Emphasis" 
https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/User:Devon_McCormick/ProposedWikiEmphasis  
that would be an overview of the wiki priorities. Bob had added a link for this 
page to the sidebar links on the yellow wiki 
https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page to make it easier to get feedback 
from users as the J wiki moves forward.

2) Raul had asked about whether Bob had resolved the issue about the missing 
essays with Chris Burke. Bob had not, but he and Chris had been discussing the 
conditions of addon information on the wiki. Chris had requested add-on 
description's updated as well as some instruction on how to create new addons. 
Chris was not available for this meeting, but will be available for the August 
18th meeting to discuss the addon challenges in more depth. Bob has marked the 
missing essays with asterisks and will include that information in the update 
video, so that the categorization can begin before the missing videos are 
transferred. 

3) Devon mentioned that it would be a good idea to get some Mandelbrot images 
that look good and would promote J to users. Raul mentioned Cliff Reiter's book 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Books#Fractals.2C_Visualization_.26_J.2C_4th_ed._.282_Parts.29
  and Bob mentioned the articles that Cliff had done in Vector 
http://archive.vector.org.uk/art10501110 (ed. Also articles in Journal of J 
http://journalofj.com/index.php/vol-6-no-1-june-2018).

4) Further discussion about addons that may be out of date and if there might 
be an "Archived" folder that would hold addons that were no longer functional, 
but that might be useful for code that might be mined for other projects.

5) Some discussion about a high definition J log with shading that had been 
requested on the APL Farm discord  and Rik Sherlock had later provided. (ed. 
The high definition image is available here 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/File:Jlogo_hires.png) This SVG version 
overcomes the issues with upscaled image files in jpg or png format rendering 
differently in different browsers. SVG allows hinting with text and there are 
proposals for hinting for other types of images. Devon wonders if text hinting 
could be leveraged for the logo?

6) There was a discussion about conferences and the recent Meet-ups for APL in 
Toronto 
https://www.meetup.com/Programming-Languages-Toronto-Meetup/events/287695788/?response=3=rsvp_medium=email_source=braze_canvas_campaign=mmrk_alleng_event_announcement_prod_v6_en_term=promo_content=lp_meetup
 

and New York 
https://www.meetup.com/Programming-Languages-Toronto-Meetup/events/287729348/?response=3=rsvp_medium=email_source=braze_canvas_campaign=mmrk_alleng_event_announcement_prod_v6_en_term=promo_content=lp_meetup
 . 

This discussion also referenced the recent ArrayCast podcast 
https://www.arraycast.com/episodes/episode33-joao-araujo that had a lot of 
discussion about the Tools of Thought community, which is involved in mindmaps, 
and how receptive they might be to array programming languages.

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development 

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is August 18th, 2022.
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report on the J wiki Meeting of August 4, 2022

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, John Baker, Devon McCormick, Raul Miller, Bob Therriault

1) Bob reviewed the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWqixYyb52Q that he 
produced to show people places of interest on the current wiki making use of 
the sidebar to allow access.
2) In categorizing the essays for the new yellow wiki, Bob found that there 
were essays that exist on the old blue wiki 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page that were not available on the yellow 
wiki https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page. An example is the 235 problem 
that Devon had put in in 2008 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Essays/235Problem. A number of approaches were 
take to try and update the pages by copying and pasting between the wiki's. 
Raul noted that the oldest pages of the wiki that were using Moin Moin may need 
updating. This was originally done with the old wiki by Chris Burke and may not 
have been done with the pages that were brought in to the new wiki. Since we 
are using the yellow wiki as a prototype this update is not crucial, but the 
update would ensure that all of the pages on the blue wiki are available for 
experimentation on the yellow wiki. An alternative would be to create new pages 
on the yellow wiki that could be copied from the blue wiki and then have the 
links adjusted. External links between the yellow and blue wiki could also be 
used, but this would mean that the blue wiki would receive prototype changes as 
categories were suggested by users.

3) Bob has created an index page that lists all of the essays 
https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Essays/Categorize in a single column. At this 
time, asterisks indicate pages that are on the blue wiki but not available on 
the yellow wiki. Participants can go through this list and click on the link, 
read the essay, add categories that they believe are appropriate, then return 
to the index and update the number along side the link. This number would 
indicate the number of people that had added categories so that the 
participants would be able to easily spot the links that had not been visited.

4) It was noted that there are links from Essays that have multiplied entries 
that all refer to the same essay. An example would be the Collatz Conjecture 
https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Essays/Collatz_Conjecture which also is 
referenced by the link Hailstone Problem, Syracuse Problem and 3n+1 Problem. 
This increases the number of links without increasing the information 
available. Devon pointed out that because the essays include the terms, a 
search would reveal the different terminology. It would require that essays 
contain the alternate terms, but this should be happening anyway for the user 
to know why they have been directed to the Collatz Conjecture when they had 
clicked on the Syracuse Problem.

5) Bob talked about the content of the next video that would explain the 
process of signing up and then how participants would access the Essays and add 
their categories. Devon mentioned that we should add an opportunity for the 
viewer to let us know if there are any areas of interest that they have that we 
should be working on. 

6) Bob estimated the number of essays to be just under 300, Raul came up with 
263 and felt that the difference may be in the time between the Eric Site Crawl 
from November  https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Eric_Iverson/Site_Map that Bob 
is using and the current Essay page https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Essays that 
Raul is using. 

7) Essays may also end up including "50 Shades of J" 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Fifty_Shades_of_J and "At Play with J" 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/At_Play_With_J and the categories would be the 
best way to include this. Devon eventually came up with a count of 233 essays 
within the Essay section alone.

8) Raul showed the changes that he had made to the J versions from the Release 
Notes contents https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/System/ReleaseNotes  so that 
instead of having conflicting links to the versions depending on where you 
accessed the information. Raul has cleaned up the bag so that all versions are 
accessed the same way and the J nav has be updated so that it also will allow 
the user to use navigation between the versions. As new versions come out, they 
can be added to the stack and then the wiki group could go in and update the 
navigation links so that they include the added page. Raul also mentioned that 
it may be a good idea to add Help and Version categories to the individual 
pages to leverage the use of categories with the version pages.

9) Art suggested that it would be a good idea to include keyword search 
suggestions at the top of the page that connect with the categories that always 
show up at the bottom of the page. There was also a question of whether it 
would be possible to incorporate categories into the search that Chris had put 
together and potentially intersections of different categories to make the 
search. Ideally, we would be able 

[Jgeneral] This week's video with some pointers on the information contained in the current wiki

['robert therriault' via General]

Hi everyone,

We are in the process of reorganizing the wiki, but we thought in the meantime 
people may not be aware of the vast amount of information about J that is 
available in the current form of the wiki.

This video will give you some ways to get quick access to some of the most 
informative areas of the wiki.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWqixYyb52Q

Cheers, bob
--
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

[Jgeneral] Report of the J Wiki Meeting of July 28, 2022

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, Thomas Bulka, Devon McCormick, Raul Miller, Bob Therriault

1) Bob reviewed the changes that he had made to the sidebar 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page, adding links to the J playground 
(naming it "J in a Browser") and moving the custom search up to the top of the 
list and removing the random links. Raul suggested that he sometimes uses 
random pages and Bob suggests that we put a random link somewhere else for 
random fans with out the profile that the sidebar gives. Bob mentioned that Ian 
Clark suggested a different name for Chris Burke's "J search". (Ed. It was "J 
search (new)") 

2) Bob talked about the changes he had made to the "Welcome to J" video 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxibe2QOA0s improving the audio and shortening 
the video by about 7 seconds. Bob suggested that we may put the Welcome to J 
video on the main page, since it is functioning as a billboard. Also reviewed 
the "J wiki Video" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8aEdnduINk with explains 
the new changes to the sidebar and access to the new version of the wiki and 
the way that we will be using it as a prototype.

3) Bob asked whether there should be a topic for the next video and Devon 
suggested that an overview of the wiki would be a good idea. Bob thought that a 
quick video that uses search navigation to find the resources like Essays, 
Books, Nuvoc and Guides might be a good overview that would later be updated 
when the structural aspects of the wiki are finalized.

4) Devon mentions a concern that was raised about the definition of Match -: 
using terminology that referred to other J terms that a beginner may not be 
familiar with. Devon mentioned that when he looks at Unix man pages he jumps to 
the end of the pages to see the examples. Bob spoke about some edits that he 
did on the wiki version of the Primer 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Help/Primer/Primer_Contents to make some 
concepts a bit clearer to people who might not already be familiar with the way 
that J worked. Raul pointed out that the Primer was meant read alongside a 
keyboard to get you into experimental mode and it was agreed that links to the 
playground would be a really useful to provide links to the Primer, allowing 
people to experiment on their browser. Thomas suggested that all of the books 
would benefit from more exercises that allowed the learner to test their 
knowledge. Bob said he would talk to Eric about how he would like to see the 
Primer used or any changes that it might benefit from. The Jeremy Howard APL 
group 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGpR2ILao5M=PLfYUBJiXbdtSgU6S_3l6pX-4hQYKNJZFU
  where terms were introduced sequentially, so that learners were familiar with 
terminologies before they are used to define new primitives.

5) Bob reviewed the changes that he had made to the indices that Raul had 
developed on the yellow wiki https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Help/Index_C  and 
Raul indicated that these changes could be ported to the blue wiki 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page. Then Bob reviewed the large number 
of links on the Essay page https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Essays and whether 
there might be a case for setting up topics on the page that would allow 
navigation to be a little easier. Raul mentioned an extension that might allow 
wiki categories to used as a type of search and that may be an easier way to 
navigate the pages. It was also mentioned that an essay might show up in 
multiple categories and this is something that might be useful to find relevant 
information. An index page of the different essays is a good way to start 
organizing the Essays page. The topics might be suggested by the addons or the 
labs taxonomy. Thomas pointed out that the essays would require some different 
topic names. Thomas also mentioned that "50 Shades of J" 
https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Fifty_Shades_of_J and "At Play with J" 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/At_Play_With_J could be used as content for the 
essays since they are essentially books that are made up of essays. 

6) It was felt that Essays might be a good place to begin categorizing since 
the Essays have so much information that people find difficult to find. Thomas 
suggested that we have people go through the Essays and have them tag the 
different categories. Bob suggested doing a video on that process to see if we 
might be able to crowd source some of the choices. We could use the yellow wiki 
to see how people categorize and then curate the categories that are introduce 
and use them to divide the Essays into topics for the final version in the blue 
wiki. 

7) Devon was asking about whether anyone was going to the Dyalog User's Meeting 
and this lead to some discussion about whether there might be future J 
conferences whether they are virtual or in person. The example given was the 
centenary video that the British APL Association did with over a hundred 
participants on zoom. 

For access to previous meeting 

Re: [Jgeneral] Areas to emphasize with the new J wiki

['robert therriault' via General]

Thanks Devon,

I added a link on the sidebar of the code2 (yellow J) wiki to facilitate access.

Cheers, bob


> On Jul 29, 2022, at 10:05, Devon McCormick  wrote:
> 
> I've put together a page intended to help us focus on areas we want to
> emphasize for the new wiki:
> https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/User:Devon_McCormick/ProposedWikiEmphasis .
> 
> I'm hoping this will help us focus on some of the many topics we might
> cover.  Please feel free to add to this page with high-level topics where
> we should concentrate, especially those on which you are willing to work.
> 
> -- 
> 
> Devon McCormick, CFA
> 
> Quantitative Consultant
> --
> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

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[Jgeneral] Wiki update video and revised promo video

['robert therriault' via General]

Hi everyone,

One video on the recent changes that we have made to the wiki sidebar, as well 
as a chance to see the upcoming potential changes. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8aEdnduINk

The promo video that I made back in the spring with improved audio and a little 
tighter on the editing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxibe2QOA0s

Cheers, bob
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Re: [Jgeneral] wiki migration

['robert therriault' via General]

Good question Viktor,

Our plan, at this point in time, is to upgrade the old blue version of the wiki 
(code) based on the prototypes that we test in the new yellow version (code2). 
As a result, persistent changes should be made in the old blue (code) wiki, but 
if you want to try something out use the yellow (code2) version.

Let me know if you still have questions.

Cheers, bob

> On Jul 25, 2022, at 09:20, 'Viktor Grigorov' via General 
>  wrote:
> 
> Hey, 
> 
> I just now realized articles and pages have not been copied from the old 
> version of the wiki like the users' credentials have been. I am now wonder 
> whether to edit my two pages there, or create new ones on code2---will a 
> migration of all users' pages be instigated at some point? How should I 
> proceed?
> 
> --
> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

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[Jgeneral] Report on J wiki meeting of July 21, 2022

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, John Baker, Raul Miller, Bob Therriault, Michal Wallace

1) Bob presented an idea for transitioning the wik by using the yellow J wiki 
as a prototype https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page and gradually make 
changes to the blue J wiki https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page . This 
allows us to change the structure of the blue wiki by moving pages based on 
what will be prototyped in the yellow wiki. This retains the links of the blue 
wiki for historic purposes and any pages developed in the yellow wiki would 
have their history start on the blue wiki at the point at which they would be 
adopted. Bob has started on deleting some of the orphan pages that Eric's web 
crawler found in November 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Eric_Iverson/Site_Map.  Raul added a wiki 
crawler that he had written that is stood in the discussion of the index page 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Talk:Help/Index_A 

2) Bob found some CSS powers that Eric has explored on some of his pages that 
allows for customization of individual pages to the point that the generic wiki 
search can be hidden and this might be useful on the phrases page where Chris 
Burke's search may be more useful than the generic search. Michal mentioned 
that it may be useful to have some common searches included that would direct 
the newcomer to areas that might be more helpful to them. Bob showed Eric's two 
home pages https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Eric_Iverson/Home and  
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Eric_Iverson/Home2 Raul supplied a way of 
editing Eric's 'uneditable' by changing the url of the edit link on a different 
page and then changing the page id to Eric's. Bob showed some changes that he 
had made to Raul's Index pages moving the expand and collapse from the right 
side of the page to the left side as well as changing the expand and collapse 
to show and hide. These changes are seen in the A 
https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Help/Index_A , B 
https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Help/Index_B  and C 
https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Help/Index_C entries in the index. Raul 
suggested that you might do a class for these examples so that you could set 
the CSS across the wiki and it would only affect the collapsible parts in Help. 
Raul also mentioned that some of the striping on his original version had been 
lost. Bob will work on changing the CSS back so that the stripes are retained. 

3) Raul showed some of the things that he had found out about syntax 
highlighting using CSS an example could be seen at 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Essays/TurtleGraphics showing that the J wiki 
supports some syntax highlighting (strings are red, comments are italicized) 
Raul is using a  tag to enclose code that should have syntax 
highlighting https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SyntaxHighlight It is 
based on a Pygment and John mentioned that he was familiar with Pygment in its 
use with LAtex and that it probably used REGEX expressions to identify the 
syntax of the language. Raul found that it was based on Geshi and it may be 
possible to use this in other areas of J as well 
https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/g/mediawiki/extensions/SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi Bob 
wondered if there were some consistent way to highlight syntax and John 
suggested that there is not consistency, but that a blogging site 
https://dev.to seems to render syntax highlighting in J well. Raul mentioned 
that the colours are set as classes so that they could be changed in CSS.

4) Discussing the structure of the wiki Michal thought the icons were a more 
friendly way to encourage newcomers. Bob mentioned that he might not use as 
much of the icon view in certain areas such as reference or archives which are 
a bit more information intensive. Bob showed the main page with four sub pages 
which in turn would have subpages that would enable breadcrumb tracing for 
navigation https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page . In addition Bob has 
added a Navigation index that provides a breadcrumb, but this requires each 
branch of the tree to have its own navigation bar. Raul felt that there was a 
way to have the wiki build a navigation bar based on the structure of the wiki, 
but this would require the wiki to be put in a specific structure. Raul says 
that there is also an extension that is installed that allows us to do 
arbitrary stuff using lua. The archive branch could be put as a text link on 
the reference page https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page/Reference. Since 
the archive pages are not current, this would reduce their visibility , but 
still leave them available if required. Bob also thought it would be a good 
idea to divide the essays into topics to make the navigation a bit easier. Raul 
suggested the lab taxonomy and Bob thought that add ons taxonomy could be used 
as well. This would make it easier for newcomers to access the information. 
Nuvoc  https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/NuVoc  would be left intact in terms of 
of structure, but 

[Jgeneral] Report of the J Wiki meeting of July 14th, 2022

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, Bob Therriault

1) Bob reported that he had set up a page for new developments in the new wiki. 
Currently it has content of Raul's index work and some work that Bob has done 
on creating navigation bars that would supply breadcrumb navigation on each 
page.

2) The breadcrumb navigation does have a challenge because it does not actually 
track the user's movement but only the position of the user within the wiki. 
Bob has also been working on a map of the wiki that will expand and collapse to 
create a kind of a site map. In discussion with Art it may be that it is easier 
to create the tree structure with pages in the new wiki and then have the site 
map crated directly from the tree structure itself. This will mean that there 
will be a lot of reorganization of the new wiki including the updating of 
internal links. This might be done with redirection of pages, but it seems to 
Bob that this would be harder to maintain in the long run. It may be better to 
have short term pain with a much more supportable wiki in the long run. 

3) The real challenge in building a wiki this way is that changing the whole 
structure of the wiki is very difficult, adding a page may be less difficult 
and changing content on a given page is easy. Bob's feeling is that the 
structure of the wiki would not change much over time, new pages could be 
accommodated and most of the change is in the content.  

4) Manual creation of navigation requires a lot more attention to the wiki on a 
day to day basis and since this could be handled programmatically if the 
structure is set more permanently, that becomes an argument for a restructuring 
of the wiki. The big question for the community is whether anyone has arguments 
to support that it is more important that the wiki structure is fluid and allow 
movement of branches to different positions.

5) Bob possibly to create a video this week to draw attention to access to the 
new wiki and the new development page.

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is July 21st, 2022.
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Re: [Jgeneral] [Jprogramming] Report of the J Wiki Group Zoom Meeting of July 7, 2022

['robert therriault' via General]

In my last report on the J Wiki Meeting of July 7th, I incorrectly stated that 
Raul through that recursive debugging calls may be problematic. He contacted me 
with the following information to set the record straight: 

Raul: The issue I was thinking about was where it used to be that hitting a 
stop in a verb in the playground would give a javascript popup. And, attempting 
to close that javascript popup would bring it back up again. So there was no 
way to regain control of that browser session -- you had to close the window. 
More recently, setting stops seems to have been completely disabled in the 
playground. 

Thank you for correcting me Raul, I will update the report that has been put on 
the wiki accordingly. 

Cheers, bob

> On Jul 8, 2022, at 17:32, 'robert therriault' via Programming 
>  wrote:
> 
> Raul suggests it would be based on the current 13!: foreigns, but that 
> recursive debugging calls may be problematic.

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[Jgeneral] Report of the J Wiki Group Zoom Meeting of July 7, 2022

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, Raul Miller, Devon McCormick, Raghu Ranganathan, Bob 
Therriault

1) Chris and Raul completed the transfer of Essays, Books and some of the Help 
indices from the jsoftware site across to the current J wiki in early June. The 
navigation bar to access these materials can be found at 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Help. Note that the old Dictionary, the old 
Vocabulary, and the Foreign Conjunctions are still external links on the 
Jsoftware site. This duplicates the move that had been made earlier to the 
prototype wiki. https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Help 

2) Raul demos his streamlined version of indices that would allow users to 
search by keyword alphabetically. https://code2.jsoftware.com/wiki/Help/Index_A 
This is similar to the j807 search but uses expansion components to allow the 
user to focus on the keywords. Raghu wondered if there could be a more user 
friendly navigation bar. Raul pointed out that the navigation bar is consistent 
across the J wiki interface and hovering over the navigation item reveals 
additional information. 

3) Raghu asks about the editor log for the J Playground mentioned in 
correspondence and whether there is a direction that the wiki would like to go 
in this implementation. https://github.com/jsoftware/j-playground/issues/66 
Devon says that he has created a workspace functionality in J that he uses 
personally. Bob says the concern that he has is that the J Playground has had a 
guiding principal of introducing J to a new user on the browser. The challenge 
is that the web environment may require a different approach to saving local 
storage. Raghu suggests that it could be an autosave upon page closing with a 
timestamp and then the user could access the editor logs from the playground so 
that they could recreate the state of the page. Bob suggests that although the 
wiki will be working with the J Playground, it seems that it may be a good idea 
to bring in Eric, Chris and Henry to get a sense of the way that the J 
Playground will work with other J interfaces. Devon wonders if it would be a 
problem if the J Playground exceeds the capabilities of the current interfaces. 
Raul and Bob don't really see that as a problem, but it does suggest that 
questions about where the Playground could be best used within the current J 
environment would be good to address with the wider J  community. One of the 
challenges for the J Playground is, if it were to be used in a production 
environment, how a debugger could be implemented on a web browser. Raul 
suggests it would be based on the current 13!: foreigns, but that recursive 
debugging calls may be problematic. Raghu feels that if debugging were needed 
that could be a significant amount of work. Bob says that he will contact Joe 
and see if there is interest in a meeting for a wider discussion the J 
Playground.

4) Devon thinks that beginners go to the wiki for introductory materials, but 
the main purpose of the wiki is to provide information and so it needs to be 
easily searchable. Raul wonders if there is an opportunity to let the beginners 
know the areas that they would need to learn to become more proficient. Bob 
refers to Jeremy Howard's study group in APL where he is covering the primitive 
glyphs first so that the definitions can be understood and the language could 
be further explored. There may be an opportunity for a future book or lab that 
might take this approach or perhaps the way the wiki is constructed. Raghu 
suggests that the wiki may not be the place for tutorials, but a place that is 
easily searchable and the links would take you to the different resources.

5) Raghu also suggests that a Rosetta Stone on the wiki would be useful so that 
a person who is familiar with a language would be able to find the 
corresponding J terms. Art suggests the different languages translated into J 
terms. Bob wonders if there could be a Nuvoc limited search for language terms. 
Art suggests a spreadsheet link that would allow the user to find their 
language and the translations. Raul suggests that there is work to do with the 
information on the add-ons and Bob thinks that is more of a content problem 
than a wiki structure problem. Raghu and Devon think that a better format is to 
have a page that is set up for each language that compares those languages to 
J, so that there is a reduction in the noise. Raghu thinks that the BQN - J and 
APL - BQN pages would be useful. BQN to J 
https://mlochbaum.github.io/BQN/doc/fromJ.html BQN to Dyalog APL 
https://mlochbaum.github.io/BQN/doc/fromDyalog.html

6) Bob demos APLcart as a model for how J phrases may be improved. 
https://aplcart.info/ BQN has also done this 
https://mlochbaum.github.io/bqncrate/  These have more dynamic searches that 
will allow users to enter keywords and be given suggestions of code that may be 
appropriate. Raghu says that he is familiar with both of these and would be 
willing to help out with this transfer. 

[Jgeneral] Report of the J Wiki meeting of June 2, 2022

['robert therriault' via General]

Present: Art Anger, Raul Miller, Devon McCormick, Bob Therriault

1) Chris Burke will update the mediaWiki software for the old wiki on the 
weekend of June 4th.

2) Security for the playground seems to be well sandboxed. The ability to 
download files may present an issue. Raul points out that javascript has the 
ability to download files and that web assembly has the same issues as J and 
web assembly is more popular. The risk may be that downloaded J code could be 
malicious and later transferred out of the J playground sandbox and onto the 
host computer, but as Raul points out that is already the case with J add-ons. 
Bob suggests that security should be kept in mind as we move forward and the 
risk to the wiki would probably be social engineering. Raul mentions that the 
changes that he is doing bringing the books and essay across from J software 
probably presents the biggest risk based on the 700 changes that it involves. 
The best way to avoid future issues may be to keep backups in case bad code 
shows up. 

3) User access to the playground from the wiki can be done directly or via a 
landing page. The feeling is that orientation access for newcomers should go 
through the landing page, but links of examples from Nuvoc would go direct to 
the J Playground, as the landing page would just get in the way. 

4) Raul points out the difference between the  tt  and  code 
 elements in wiki formatting. On the t. page 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Vocabulary/tdot he has set some meta code that 
shows some BNF notation and there may be a need to show this type of meta 
description that exists outside of tt and code. This could be created using 
specific CSS for the wiki if a format were decided upon. Raul also showed an 
example of Rosetta Code which has specific formatting for examples which could 
be a model for the J wiki www.rosettacode.org/wiki/Metered_concurrency#j 

5) Next J wiki meeting will be June 23rd. A discussion of our plan for the 
summer. Raul hopes to do his transfer to the current wiki soon after Chris has 
updated the wiki software. The books already exist on the new wiki. Then the 
focus of wiki development will be on the landing page and building out that 
network of pages. Can we track that way that people are using it? Raul suggests 
that we can using the logs of the wiki which can tell us when users moved 
between wikis which may give clues to the areas that may not be working. This 
will be something that we may put into place in the summer when more of the 
landing page network has been established. The measure for when to switch might 
be use of the new one in preference of the old one, although that is not likely 
since it depends on knowledge of the new wiki to be at least as common as 
knowledge of the old wiki. There will also be cases where there are links from 
the new to the old that would be activated in usual wiki activities and would 
not indicate dissatisfaction with the new wiki. We may use anecdotal 
information initially to lead us to the areas that we may want to gather more 
analytic information, with a possible transfer in September if everyone is 
happy enough with the result. 

6) Raul has built a redirect table for the book pages that have been moved to 
the J wiki and that is available if in the future the Jsoftware site wishes to 
set redirects to the J wiki for the books.

For access to previous meeting reports 
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Wiki_Development

If you would like to participate in the development of the J wiki please 
contact us on the general forum and we will get you an invitation to the next J 
wiki meeting held on Thursdays at 23:00 (UTC) Next meeting is June 23rd, 2022.
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