[Jprogramming] The Accessible Dictionary

[Sherlock, Ric]

> From: Ian Clark
> > http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Vocabulary/FormalPageNames
> The script: charname.ijs now has the missing verb: cmx.
> I've also included: cut -since I've noticed more than one definition
> of that floating about.

(In the interests of using the libraries you could just use: load 'strings')
 
> NB. I've appended yet another proposal, which is in charname.ijs as:
> CHARNAME_CAMEL.
> This is for a set of CamelCase pages at the top level of the Wiki.
> They are all listed on /FormalPageNames/ . Notice they are all
> currently in grey.
> This offers a lot of advantages for easy hyperlinking --and easy
> access over the web.
> ...Somebody tell me the disadvantages, now.

Here are some:
* The "easy hyperlinking" isn't much of an advantage because generally you will want the displayed text to be something other than the CamelCase text. 
* Having extra letters (z) etc to make it conform to CamelCase is awkward. 
* In some instances on Moin CamelCase gets shown with spaces between the words.

> On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 8:04 AM, Skip Cave <skip at caveconsulting.com>
> wrote:
> > It is true that the Wiki page names will mostly not typically be used
> by
> > the reader. However, I think that it would still be nice to have the
> > page names have the following characteristics:

I agree that the first step is to agree on desirable characteristics

> > 1) The page name should use common English names that obviously tie
> to the symbols on the associated page. An English-speaking person should
> be able to easily determine the referenced symbol from it's ASCII page
> name. Most people should be able to pick the symbol out of a list of
> all of the J symbols, given its' ASCII page name. This eliminates names
> such as "circum", "circumflex", or "asciicircum" for "hat" (who knew?).

I agree with this principle, but not wholly with the example. If we decide that using a standard reference set is not necessarily desirable then I would use the Wikipedia name for this "caret" in preference to either "circum" or "hat". 

> > 2) The names should be as short as possible without loosing their
> > semantic content.
> > That makes "star" better than "asterisk" (shorter), number for
> > numbersign, amp for ampersand, quotsing for quotesingle , dot for
> > period, under for underscore, and tilde for asciitilde   I know that
> > "star" means something different in the APL character set, but we are
> > only concerned with pure ASCII here, and the general English-speaking
> > audience.

I agree shorter is better, but think it is even more important that the names chosen are the most widely accepted names for the ASCII symbol. I also think that abbreviating words is undesirable as it leads to potential lack of clarity and consistency.

For that reason I'd stick with "ampersand", "quotesingle" (although quotesingle isn't really going to feature anywhere), and "underscore" (also because "under" is already a verb name). I suppose that also means that we should go with "exclamation" rather than "exclam".

"asterisk" is used both on Wikipedia and in the Red Book to describe *, so I would go with that.

I think that "hash" is probably the best choice for #  (e.g. from hashbang)

I'm happy with tilde and dot (I'm not worried about dotdot being confused for colon).

In the interests of naming the symbol rather than the J verb name I think that "hyphen" might be better than "minus"

I think we can use "quote" for "  (rather than quotedbl) because Wikipedia calls it a "quotation mark" and the HTML entity is "quot"

Although using "less" and "greater" is shorter I think that < and > are probably both more commonly known as "lessthan" and "greaterthan" so we should go with them. Gets around the Neville's issue with "less" too.

> > There is no reason to tie this naming scheme to any other "standard".
> > IMHO, it is more important to have an easy connection between the
> page name and the symbol that any English speaker can grasp, than
> following some standard. A secondary goal would be the brevity of the ASCII
> name.

Yes I agree that conforming to a standard doesn't really have that many benefits. I also agree with Raul that we're probably spending way too much time on this. :)

Here is my latest (and probably last ;-) ) proposal:

 33 ! exclamation     NB. no abbreviations
 34 " quote
 35 # hash
 36 $ dollar
 37 % percent
 38 & ampersand
 39 ' quotesingle     NB. Won't really be used anywhere
 40 ( parenleft       NB. Won't really be used anywhere
 41 ) parenright      NB. Won't really be used anywhere
 42 * asterisk
 43 + plus
 44 , comma
 45 - hyphen
 46 . dot
 47 / slash
 48 0 zero
 49 1 one
 50 2 two
 51 3 three
 52 4 four
 53 5 five
 54 6 six
 55 7 seven
 56 8 eight
 57 9 nine
 58 : colon
 59 ; semicolon
 60 < lessthan
 61 = equal
 62 > greaterthan
 63 ? question
 64 @ at
 65 A acap
 66 B bcap
 67 C ccap
 68 D dcap
 69 E ecap
 70 F fcap
 71 G gcap
 72 H hcap
 73 I icap
 74 J jcap
 75 K kcap
 76 L lcap
 77 M mcap
 78 N ncap
 79 O ocap
 80 P pcap
 81 Q qcap
 82 R rcap
 83 S scap
 84 T tcap
 85 U ucap
 86 V vcap
 87 W wcap
 88 X xcap
 89 Y ycap
 90 Z zcap
 91 [ bracketleft
 92 \ backslash
 93 ] bracketright
 94 ^ caret
 95 _ underscore
 96 ` grave
 97 a a
 98 b b
 99 c c
100 d d
101 e e
102 f f
103 g g
104 h h
105 i i
106 j j
107 k k
108 l l
109 m m
110 n n
111 o o
112 p p
113 q q
114 r r
115 s s
116 t t
117 u u
118 v v
119 w w
120 x x
121 y y
122 z z
123 { braceleft
124 | bar
125 } braceright
126 ~ tilde
127