[J3] [EXTERNAL] Re: Suggested editorial change

[Clune, Thomas L. (GSFC-6101)]

I agree.   Continuations of the procedure names is esp. problematic.  It makes the process of scanning the table for a given procedure tedious.   SCALE, SCAN, SELECTED_…, KIND (what?), …SELECTED_…,

Another suggestion, probably not desirable, but I thought worth mentioning:   switch to more of a YAML like presentation.

SELECTED_REAL_KIND:
    Arguments:   ([P, R, RADIX])
    Class:       transformational function
    Description: Real kind selection.

This is too large a change for an on-the-fly-edit of the sort Malcolm proposed,  but if others consider this approach better, I’m happy to volunteer to put together the edits paper.  (And would try to provide Malcolm with the necessary TeX edits to spare him the tedious exercise.)

Cheers,

- Tom


On Jul 19, 2020, at 5:43 AM, John Reid via J3 <j3 at mailman.j3-fortran.org<mailto:j3 at mailman.j3-fortran.org>> wrote:

Malcolm,

Yes, this would be a good improvement. I don't like the long gaps after short procedure names and I don't like long proecedure names being continued.

John.

Malcolm Cohen via J3 wrote:
I was just looking at Table 16.1, as one does, and wincing at the ugly continuation lines sometimes due to a long intrinsic name and other times due to a long argument list, and wondering if it would look better than instead of
 * Four columns "Procedure", "Arguments", "Class", "Description"
we had
 * Three columns "Procedure (arguments)", "Class", "Description"
I tried it out just on the SELECTED_whatever_KIND intrinsics, and indeed it eliminated the ugly continuations, at the (minor?) cost of no longer having the argument lists all line up.
I'm sure it would not eliminate all continuations, but...
...what do people think? Does this sound like a good idea?
For most entries this is easy - it just takes deleting the first ampersand on the line, but entries that would still be continued may need a bit of extra work to make the continuation indented. So maybe an hour or so of editing time, depending on how fussy I get about the look of the result.
Of course we could go back to the original format if people decide after seeing it that they don't like it after all.
Any and all comments welcome.
Cheers,
--
..............Malcolm Cohen, NAG Oxford/Tokyo.

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