There's nothing I can add to what Henry says.

…At least where verbs are concerned. But IMHO the NuVoc pattern is a bad
fit for modifiers. Especially Atop (@) and friends, plus (!:), in spite of
Henry's laudable efforts with both.

To me, all modifiers in NuVoc are fair game for anyone who fancies they can
do better. Plus finish the job – J wiki is a great showcase of partial
solutions. Depends of course on what you mean by "better" – I mean "better
for new users", and it's good if that's evidence-based.

But I also think…

1. It's hard to do better for new users except with *task-oriented*
documentation (aka "how-to"). NuVoc is hopelessly *function-oriented*.
Indeed: verb-oriented.

2. However much you fancy them as the crown jewels of J, there's precious
few modifiers new user actually need, to write J to achieve what they
already can with Python. Why not NuVoc them in terms of the commoner verbs
generated by them? …As NuVoc already does for (!.) .

3. Spoonfeed the new user. Pros get used to anything. (Then they gripe like
h*ll if it's changed.)

On Wed, 29 Jun 2022 at 09:51, Henry Rich <henryhr...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I was referring to the error in 5!:0.
>
> NuVoc is intended to be a complete reference, but it is written with the
> new user in mind.  That's why it leads with examples. I usually scroll down
> right away to the Details section.
>
> What level to pitch NuVoc at is an important marketing decision.  The
> current layout is intended to be of most help to programmers who have used
> J for a few weeks or months, or maybe haven't used it at all yet but are
> trying to get a handle on the language.
>
> I continue to believe that addressing those programmers' needs is the best
> way to encourage use of J.
>
> Henry Rich
>
> On Wed, Jun 29, 2022, 10:18 AM Raul Miller <rauldmil...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Jun 29, 2022 at 4:04 AM Henry Rich <henryhr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > If you find errors in NuVoc, by all means fix them.
> >
> > Here, it's not an isolated error but an issue of structure and
> > organization.
> >
> > My fix would be a complete rebuild of the NuVoc pages documenting
> > primitives -- a quick look suggests over 200 pages linked from the
> > main Vocabulary page -- to use a presentation style considerably
> > closer to that of the original dictionary (with the NuVoc content
> > additions retained, of course, and with some other changes including
> > those informed by this thread, but still significantly restructured).
> >
> > I am not inclined to tackle this kind of project without coordination,
> > and runs on the test wiki, but I am also not inclined to tackle
> > projects on that scale if they would be unwanted.
> >
> > --
> > 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
>
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