Thanks, but...

You have once or twice before tried to explain bullet commands to me, but I 
remain confused. I'm sure it must be me. Some follow on questions:

Why do you refer to them as "iX bullet commands"?
 
Which ctrl keyboard shortcuts are you duplicating? Ctrl-v, -v, -x?

I had gone through the instructions, defined the function, ran it (with a 
string argument) and got the result I would expect from i.#y, but have no idea 
what use I should make of that. (Which is why I wondered if it was just a way 
to avoid having to enclose a string argument in quotes.) Might be handy if I 
was using voice translation to fill the input area, but beyond that I'm stuck 
for a practical use case.

Sorry... 

> On Feb 10, 2014, at 2:31 PM, Eric Iverson <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> As a small answer to one of your questions:
> 
> iX bullet commands provide some of the fucntionality of ctrl keyboard 
> shortcuts.
> 
> for help on bulltet commands:
> 
> bullet refers to the button to the right of the input area with the big dot
> 
> press the ? button
> see Hbullet in the list of available helps
> either type Hbullet in the entry area and press return
> 
> or
> 
> tap the line with Hbullet and press return once to recall and once to run
> 
> try the example in the help
> 
> that is,
>   ev_bullet_abc_jevents=: 3 :  'i.#y' NB. handler for abc ... bullet
> 
> then type: abc 5
> and press the bullet button
> 
> Hope this helps with bullet.
> 
>> On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 2:22 PM, Jim Russell <[email protected]> wrote:
>> One reason I follow the J forums, is in response to the advice "if you are 
>> the smartest person In the room, find another room".  There ought to be a 
>> corollary "when you are the dumbest person in the room, keep silent so as 
>> not to prove it." So I'm reluctant to document the questions I struggled 
>> with as I recently revisited  J on my iphone, but here are some, in no 
>> particular order:
>> 
>> If I forget about JE JHS JVM, etc., do I need to find the definitions in the 
>> release notes? (Not to mention the J8 q? new mnemonics.)
>> 
>> What are bullet commands? Why might I use them? Just to avoid quoting 
>> character arguments? What is the J approach to event handlers? Any IOS 
>> events J programs can handle?
>> 
>> What is the difference between Jh and Js? Where is smoutput documented?
>> 
>> Where is NuVoc page? (Love it!) (Btw, unlike other noobs, I started with a J 
>> folder which also had icons for 5 or 6 useful Jsoftware pages.)
>> 
>> What are arguments to plot? Other options (like surface)? What is  jwplot? 
>> (Would have been worse had I not known about locals and z local).
>> 
>> Where is Ix? (Why wasn't it in help?)
>> 
>> Is Hall a verb that calls to other H* nouns? (I know Eric is not going to 
>> resort to rape and paste programmimg!) How to distinguish verbs/nouns? How 
>> to interpret result of nl?
>> 
>> How do I restore/repeat the initial output I got when I first ran the app?
>> 
>> Would a newcomer think that the wonderful two character J? commands were 
>> part of the language? (I assume the initial caps are a thoughtful concession 
>> to IOS text entry auto correct?)
>> 
>> Why, unlike most all other IOS apps, does J seem to revert to a clean 
>> session after a day or so? Conversely, how can I clear the session log when 
>> I do want to?
>> 
>> Has anyone else been making use of J for IOS? Why are there so damn few 
>> reviews for it in the App Store?
>> 
>>> On Feb 10, 2014, at 7:30 AM, Raul Miller <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> 
>>> If you would put together a list of words (and perhaps phrases?) that need
>>> definition, I (or we) would be happy to fill in the definitions, and supply
>>> a few small examples.
>>> 
>>> We might need to go several rounds of this to adequately satisfy you, but
>>> that's ok.
>>> 
>>> Or maybe we have an adequate reference to refer you to? But if that were
>>> the case, I imagine the search engines would have found it for you. So
>>> instead let's maybe think about hashing out something that might be a
>>> suitable addition to the J wiki?
>>> 
>>> Thanks,
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Raul
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 8:51 PM, Jim Russell <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> (Sorry, I got no further than "No," when I put my iphone back in my shirt
>>>> pocket and "man boob" sent it.)
>>>> 
>>>> More later when I try to recall all the dumb words phrases I was
>>>> fruitlessly trying to find as I played with J on my iPhone this past week.
>>>> 
>>>>> On Feb 9, 2014, at 8:22 PM, Raul Miller <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Do you mean like http://www.jsoftware.com/help/dictionary/vocabul.htm?
>>>>> 
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>> 
>>>>> --
>>>>> Raul
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 7:06 PM, Jim Russell <[email protected]>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> I suspect that a glossary of J (and related programming terms) would
>>>> help a great deal. Or does one exist?
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On Feb 9, 2014, at 1:30 AM, Skip Cave <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> I was looking over NuVoc the other day, and thinking how it helped me
>>>> learn
>>>>>>> the J primitives. My next thought was how I wished that we could fix
>>>> the J
>>>>>>> search engine so that when newbies searched for stuff in the J wiki
>>>> using
>>>>>>> traditional programming lingo, they would automatically find the J
>>>>>>> equivalent functions.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> When J gave new names to all the J programming elements, it was all for
>>>>>>> good reasons. However that made it really hard to learn J by searching
>>>> the
>>>>>>> wiki for programming concepts, using common programming names. When I
>>>> am
>>>>>>> programming in J, I often come to a point where I know what I want to
>>>> do,
>>>>>>> and I know what most other programming languages would call what I
>>>> want to
>>>>>>> do. If I search for that name in the J wiki though, I usually come up
>>>>>>> empty-handed.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> What we really need in NuVoc, as well as all of the J doc, is a set of
>>>>>>> common-use keywords attached to every J concept. Thus if a newbie
>>>> searches
>>>>>>> for "assignment", he will get the vocabulary and dictionary pages for
>>>> Is
>>>>>>> (local) and Is (global), When he searches for "indexing" he will get
>>>> the
>>>>>>> Catalog pages. I could go on like this for quite awhile.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Also  when newbies or anyone stumbles upon a new concept in any of the
>>>> J
>>>>>>> doc, we should make it easy for that person to add new keywords to
>>>> that doc
>>>>>>> page. Hopefully the keywords they add will make it easier for the next
>>>>>>> person to find that concept in the future.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> So my proposal is that each NuVoc page (and all J doc pages for that
>>>>>>> matter) needs a list of keywords at (say) the bottom of the page,
>>>> giving
>>>>>>> common programming names for the J concept on that page. In that way, a
>>>>>>> newbie searching for "assignment" would at least have a chance of
>>>> finding
>>>>>>> what he is looking for.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> However, my idea is more that just putting a list of keywords on every
>>>> doc
>>>>>>> page, As has been discussed on the J mail list, Newbies who are trying
>>>> to
>>>>>>> learn J, know what they are looking for, when they search for a
>>>> particular
>>>>>>> concept. What If we could make it so when someone finally does find
>>>> what
>>>>>>> they were looking for, they could easily add words to the keyword list
>>>> on
>>>>>>> the doc page they found. They could add the words that they were using
>>>> to
>>>>>>> (unsuccessfully) search for that concept. Then each doc page would
>>>> start to
>>>>>>> collect keywords that people commonly use for that concept, making it
>>>> much
>>>>>>> easier for newbies (and even casual J user oldies like me) to find that
>>>>>>> concept in the future.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> There needs to be an easy (but controlled, and perhaps curated) way to
>>>> put
>>>>>>> a new keyword on any doc page, while that page is being viewed. There
>>>> needs
>>>>>>> to be a brief statement above the keyword block explaining what it is,
>>>> how
>>>>>>> to add a keyword, and why one should do it.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> I believe that in the long run, this keyword scheme could have a bigger
>>>>>>> impact on reducing the "steep learning curve" of J than almost any
>>>> other
>>>>>>> documentation mechanism.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Skip
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Skip Cave
>>>>>>> Cave Consulting LLC
>>>>>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>>> 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
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>>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
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