Re: Learning Manual TOC missing subsubsubsections

[Graham Percival]

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)

... err, this special notice isn't meant to suggest that you
shouldn't feel free to tell me that I'm being an idiot for the
rest of the time. 


> 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.

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

Cheers,
- Graham