Ian Clark writes:
Look, I can use any set of names we want. But I can't even make a
start without a set of names, and once chosen they unavoidably get set
in concrete. Has anyone got a showstopper of a reason not to go with
the list in
http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Vocabulary/FormalPageNames ?
...which is the same as column 4 in table 2 of
http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Vocabulary/Discussion
Aren't they're only placeholders as far as the end-user is concerned?
Is anyone seriously going to type them or have to remember them? I
can't think of a task that needs that.
There's an argument for having a consistent set of names, taken from
some published source, not just an Irish Parliament of what we fancy.
Someone suggested the set from the Adobe Red Book and that's what I
went with. Even though it says "period" for "dot" (which I personally
don't fancy much, but I don't think it matters).
(end of Ian Clark quote)
Remember that we are talking about two different things here:
1. Graphemes (symbols) [squiggles of ink on a page]
and
2. Functions in J
The Adobe Red Book names are only one set of names for the graphemes.
The J primitives are functions (or perhaps other things).
The pain and agony being expressed here is being generated by trying to
force the name of the graphemes to be the same as the name of the function
and/or the description of the function.
A very simple example is the grapheme - (given the name hyphen in the Red
Book).
One of the function descriptions is to subtract one "thing" from another.
The J function name is minus.
The SAME grapheme is used in connection with the
J Function whose description is subtract from zero, and whose
function name is negate.
I suggest that you keep using the long-standing J names for the functions,
and reserve the Red Book (or other standard list) of names for the
graphemes.
Thus, the vocabulary is a list of primitive functions with names like
negate, floor etc. that are invoked by typing graphemes with names like
hyphen.
Robert P. Rumble
[email protected]
(510) 886-8337
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
