[J3] [EXTERNAL] Re: Suggested editorial change

[Reuben D. Budiardja]

I agree with (trying out) the three columns format for the table.

On 07/20/2020 07:41 AM, Clune, Thomas L. (GSFC-6101) via J3 wrote:
> 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.

The YAML-like presentation would probably make the list takes many more 
pages since "Arguments", "Class", and "Description" would be repeated. 
Maybe it can be mitigated by using a two-column format on those pages 
but I don't know if that's something we want to do ... This would no 
longer be a Table.

Best,
Reuben

> 
> 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.
> 

-- 
Reuben D. Budiardja, Ph.D.
reubendb at ornl.gov | (865) 576-9519
National Center for Computational Sciences
Oak Ridge National Laboratory