Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!pacbell!ames!amdahl!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!Schizoid
From: Schizoid@cup.portal.com (FRED APPLE BONHOTAL)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.apl
Subject: Re: Is APL a dying language?
Message-ID: <12034@cup.portal.com>
Date: 2 Dec 88 23:14:45 GMT
References: <13635@cisunx.UUCP> <1938@water.waterloo.edu> <723@convex.UUCP> <18@kepler1.UUCP> <2044@vu-vlsi.Villanova.EDU>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 23

>APL would go farther with ASCII characterset....

I've used at least two implementations that worked with a 64-character
set (uppercase ASCII, basically); in fact, that's where I learned APL.
It wasn't until much later that I ever used the "native" APL characterset.

In one implementation, each character that wasn't represented on a "normal"
keyboard was mapped to two characters, the first of which was always $ or
@ (at the time, the "native" set didn't include $); e.g. rho was $R.
Not all of the definitions were intuitively obvious -- theta was $V,
phi was @V, del was $F, locked-del was $K -- but it wasn't that hard to
learn.  It wasn't even that difficult to read.  (University of Maryland)

Easier to learn, but harder to read, was the Harris implementation.
With the exception of diamond (@DI), each character was represented
by an @ followed by the first letter of the character's name followed by
the first constant after that (del was @DL, rho @RH); where there were
multiple common names, the dyadic one was given preference.  (There was
one other exception, now that I think about it: delta was @DE.)

It's surprisingly useful; I wish more APL's offered this escape set.

schizoid@cup.portal.com