@Henry -- your argument did occur to me, just after I pressed the send button...
I think I agree with what you say, pivoted heavily on the word "painlessly". If I'd been brutally honest with myself I'd have admitted that I'd been working out how to implement Brian's suggestion and seen it would have been awkward at this late stage. The feature should have been incorporated when the original set of stubs was generated. It's a design failure that it wasn't. I did try to anticipate the need to retrofit a new template to existing content. But I wouldn't like to have to try it in practice. I conjecture that the bare Ranks, e.g. _ _ _ -is baffling to the novice. Like all conjectures this needs proof (which I don't have and can't get). The guiding light of NuVoc is to lean over backwards to avoid being baffling. But something is needed -- and it needs to work as you prescribe, and to be effective, else it isn't worth doing. I confess I don't know the answer. On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 4:20 PM, Henry Rich <henryhr...@nc.rr.com> wrote: > Agreed that the important thing for NuVoc is to give the beginner what > they need, in a form that they can understand without having to follow a > trail. > > But asking a genuine beginner whether they need to see the ranks is like > asking a congressman a question about economics, and just as likely to > discover the right answer. > > Here's a proposal to consider: > > in http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Vocabulary/ltdot, for example, where we > now have > > <. y (Floor) > > we could instead have > > <. y (Floor, operates on individual atoms) > > The 'operates on individual atoms' bit would link to a discussion of verb > rank. > > By seeing the rank described verbally, right there on every verb, a > beginner would notice this subtle difference between verbs, and would > eventually be tempted to understand what it means. > > The questions posted to this Forum prove that you can't survive as a J > coder without understanding rank. I think NuVoc should accept the mission > of teaching the beginner that fact, as painlessly as possible. > > > Henry Rich > > > > On 1/20/2014 10:47 AM, Ian Clark wrote: > >> @Brian - Thanks for your appreciation. It's encouraging. Throughout I've >> had the niggling feeling that the J Dic was hard to improve on, and I was >> adding little or no value. >> >> Unlike the J Dic, NuVoc doesn't show the Rank(s) of a verb. The original >> idea was for it to do so. But I think that's advanced information for a >> beginner, and best seen by clicking through to the J Dic via the "See >> Also". >> >> Others will vehemently disagree, and I think I can predict who they'll be. >> >> But maybe I'll come to see that a bold button in the same place on every >> title line to click through to the Dic entry would be good, if not >> essential. >> >> If anyone wants to go through all the verbs and add the Ranks to the title >> lines, I'm not going to throw a tantrum. Not if its done consistently, and >> right. >> >> Can we hear the authoritative voice of a genuine beginner about this? >> >> >> On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 4:45 AM, Brian Schott <schott.br...@gmail.com >> >wrote: >> >> Ian, >>> >>> That is amazing. Thank you for that great resource. >>> >>> I don't know if I dare ask the following, but, here goes. Is there any >>> way >>> to add a feature -- I think it's called a tool-tip -- to the main page >>> which would show the rank of each verb when someone hovers over the >>> primitive? If so, would other folks use such a feature? >>> >>> -- >>> (B=) >>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >>> 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
