lsecs vs lents

Had a great IM discussion with Norm. I had never understood the need for both lsecs (ledger sections) and lents (ledger entries). Lsecs could have nested lsecs or lents. But why differentiate?

Well, eariler versions of the Ark never supported lsecs, so it wasn't much of an issue. To me, the distinction is in naming. Lsecs have names, lents have headlines. Names can be used in pathnames, headlines can not. Headlines can, in turn, contain names of other items. Headlines are more like 1-liners.

So CompStrm-1 contains only lsecs, but named as LedgerEntries. This will change in G2. There are lots of things that can be done with lents. We will however need a special form of include for including lents--it would have both a pathname and a headline filter.

One common use of lents is to use them to hold coma delineated data, and then export/publish them to a spreadsheet. And, of course, that means composing via the incLent a set of visible lents to be published.

G1 is very insular--its hard to get data in and out of it. That wasn't true of eariler arks and it will not be true of later generations. But this all takes time, and I got a day job--a good one.