> One problem with documentation is that writing good docs takes several drafts, audience participation and careful editing.
Amen to that! Mind you, more could be done (at rather less effort) simply keeping existing documentation up-to-date. Still an appreciable workload, though. > j6 still being offered for download is to me a clear sign than nothing is yet ready to replace it. We're apt to forget just how good j602 was. Good enough to persuade me to abandon APL (whatever the vendor) for all my serious work. The very limitations of jwd were a source of strength: for a while it was genuinely cross-platform (albeit on the platforms of ten years ago), with very little effort on the application developer's part. This was vital to me. I think j602 led the field there, in its time. And its documentation was coherent: perhaps as much as it will ever be again. The upshot is, it's a very hard act to follow. Anyone IMO would find it so. Hats off to Jsoftware for what they've achieved. On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 2:25 AM, Raul Miller <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 8:13 PM, Ian Clark <[email protected]> wrote: > > I see that in j801 "edit" is no longer defined, files.ijs has vanished > into > > stdlib.ijs -- and the latter has lost its comments. Failure of anyone to > > complain about that sort of thing is a clear sign (to me) that J8 is, as > > yet, only addressing the needs of existing users. > > Being an existing user, and frequently finding edit useful, I'm > uncomfortable with your conclusion. > > j801 is incomplete, though - and j6 still being offered for download > is to me a clear sign than nothing is yet ready to replace it. > > >>Doesn't the J community care any more about such folks? > > > > I've been asking that sort of question for years. > > I do not think that anyone would turn down useful contributions. One > problem with documentation is that writing good docs takes several > drafts, audience participation and careful editing. > > -- > 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
