Re: Learning Manual TOC missing subsubsubsections

[Carl D. Sorensen]

On 1/2/09 9:01 PM, "Graham Percival" <address@hidden> wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 02, 2009 at 12:56:18PM -0700, Carl D. Sorensen wrote:
>> 
>> On 1/2/09 12:30 PM, "Trevor Daniels" <address@hidden> wrote:
>> 
>>> I agree; that's why it is important to set out the standards
>>> clearly and to ensure they are consistent with clarity.  Look
>>> at chapter 3.
> 
> Mao.  I only just noticed that most of NR 3 has a different depth
> than NR 1+2.  Sorry, Trevor.
> 
> For the next week, feel free to tell me "Graham you're being an
> idiot" -- for the next few days I'm going to be frazzled over the
> upcoming flight, then on Tues (my 30th birthday!) I spend the
> entire day in the air or airports (thanks to crossing the date
> line, that day is something like 12 hours long for me :), and
> after that I'll be setting up in an unfamiliar city and unfamiliar
> university.  Look forward to plenty of stupid mistakes from me!
> (I didn't think that I'd be this bad, but the past day or two
> definitely shows that I'm not at my best)

When we went to Japan in 1998, my wife missed her birthday.  We left on the
night before her birthday, and crossed the dateline in-flight, and arrived
on the afternoon after her birthday.

You'll have a great adventure!

>> As I've reviewed NR 3, 4, 5, and 6, it appears to me that these chapters are
>> inherently less deep than chapters 1 and 2.
>> 
>> I'd be in favor of a policy that says the equivalent of the following:
>> 
>> "Each chapter has a defined section structure.
>> 
>> The structure consists of chapter, section, and subsection.
>> 
>> If subsubsections are desired, they should be unnumbered, and all
>> subsections in the chapter should include subsubsections.
>> 
>> All substantive information in the chapter should be at the lowest section
>> level."
> 
> Sounds fine.
> 
>> IMO, if one part of chapter needs more headings than other parts, there's
>> probably a potential for reorganization.
> 
> Yes.
> 
>> Also, as I've looked more into it, I may want to recommend that NR 5 and NR
>> 6 be combined (but I'm not sure yet).
> 
> My first instinct is that no, the chapters are long enough as they
> are.  Think of NR 1+2 -- the division of "instrument-specific" is
> relatively flimsy, but we didn't want to have too many sections
> all in NR 1.

Yes, but you need to remember that 5 and 6 are one level less deep than 1
and 2.  If we combined 5 and 6, and did no other reorganization, we'd have
a chapter with two sections, each of which had about 3 subsections, and an
appropriate number of subsubsections.  We're not in NR 1 + 2 range at all,
yet.

> 
> I'd also argue that NR 5 is perfectly usable by non-programmers,
> but NR 6 requires some amount of programmer-type thought.

I think this is a good way of breaking things down.  I'll look at it
carefully before my real proposal (which, as you point out, won't be until
2.13).


Thanks,

Carl