Oleg Kobchenko wrote:
> OK, everybody got it that attaching keywords to
> any and all J documentation is suggested. Now, how to
> go about it practically?
During a nap today (Sunday), an idea occurred to me that might provide
*some* (certainly not all) of the flexibility with terminology that has
been discussed recently: I propose an extra level of indirection in the
indexing of the J documentation.
The current index points directly to appropriate locations in the J
documentation and is maintained by Jsoftware, who may not be eager to
open the index as an "everybody can do their own thing" affair (that
is, adding, changing, or even deleting entries). By adding another
layer (yeah, it may mean an additional click in searching, but I think
the final result would be worth it), the desired flexibility in
searching can be achieved without messing with Jsoftware's
prerogatives. The new index layer would point to entries in
Jsoftware's current index rather than directly to the J documentation.
In this way, the current index becomes similar to the (unalterable)
authorized headings I mentioned in my previous response to Oleg's
query, and the new index becomes similar to the (alterable) cross
references I described.
What I envision is a new wiki index that will "begin life" more or less
as a duplicate of the current index, but as terms only--no references
at all to any of the J documentation (that's the reserved function of
Jsoftware's original Ndx). The major difference from Ndx is that every
term in this index (and all terms added by users in the future) will
point to a term in Ndx rather than to actual documentation (as Ndx
does). This permits Jsoftware to change the URLs of their
documentation pages without affecting any user links. More
importantly, it permits users to freely add variant terminology and
references to the index. Here's a simplified diagram of how this works
(I'm using the name "Jindex" below for the new index, to distinguish it
from the current "Ndx"):
Documents: Ndx: Jindex:
<------, <------- Term1
Doc1 <--, | TERM1 <---, Term1variant1
| '--- DocRef '----------------------,
Doc2 <--| ,--- DocRef TopicReference: TERM1, TERM2
| | <---------------------------------'
Doc3 <--|---' TERM2 <------- Term2
'------- DocRef Term2variant1
Term2reference
All entries in Jindex would, of course, be in alphabetical order, not
in relational order as above, which was purely for ease in diagramming.
"TopicReference" might be a topic of some kind that transcends a single
term in Ndx. The only one-time effort that Jsoftware (and/or their
designee(s)) would have to perform is to make every term in Ndx an
"anchor" in HTML-like terms. This is so that the entries in Jindex
have an Ndx URL to point to.
I hope this diagram makes sense and helps visualize what I'm proposing.
Revisions? Other different ideas?
Harvey
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