If all the change ends up requiring is an edit to every valence of every
verb, adding a string to the Wiki page, that's certainly feasible. I
might even be able to dragoon a class of students into doing it. The
key thing is to work out the design.
Agreed that the numbers 0 0 0 are baffling to the beginner. I have
taught enough beginners to vouch for this.
So, what is to be done? Maybe we can settle it in this Forum, with the
participation of all.
0. Where should rank be indicated?
1. What words should indicate it?
2. What should those words link to?
3. Is more information needed?
I'll start with my proposal:
0. inside the parentheses that give the English name for the primitive
1. for monads, choose from
'operates on individual atoms of y'
'operates on lists of y'
'operates on tables of y'
'operates on y as a whole'
for dyads,
'operates on individual atoms of x and y'
'operates on lists of x and y'
'operates on lists of x, and on y as a whole'
etc.
2. Each string will link to a page or subpage describing /that rank
individually/. Rank 0 will go to a description of rank 0, rank 1 _ to a
description of rank 1 _, etc. There will be a separate page describing
the general theory of verb rank, which will be linked by the individual
pages for when the beginner is ready for it.
3. No.
Henry Rich
On 1/20/2014 11:42 AM, Ian Clark wrote:
@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 <[email protected]> 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 <[email protected]
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=)
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