APL - APL2C; anyone using it?

Author

APL2C; anyone using it?

2004-03-27, 11:51 pm

Anyone using APL2C? Is the project still active?
I read at http://www.apl2c.de
"The APL2C system is available for the Microsoft Windows 9x/NT/2000."
and
"APL2C News:
Windows Version 5.0.3 available for download now!
APL2C Tutorial "Compiling APL" held at APL 2001 conference
PDF file available for download (see "Trial Version")
Coming soon: new Linux and Windows Version with true Unicode (16-bit
characters) support!"

I heard about it a over a year ago and it looked very good to me
in more ways than one. Sent an email to Dr. Otto at that time
saying I was interested in the Linux version and offering my help
with testing on Linux. Sent another email several months ago asking
about it again but got no reply.

The site says "Last update on 2002/05/07"

I hope it's still an active project; the Linux version could be
just what I've been looking for.

Marv in Lexington, KY

Paul Houle

2004-03-27, 11:51 pm

I've been using APL2C in depth for many months, and have had traded email
with its author Dr. Tilman Otto, who says he's been too busy with job and
family of late to give it any time. Too bad, it's quite an accomplishment,
IMO.

It's an impressive and unique tool for mixing APL2 and C; however, it can be
somewhat fragile unless you know what to avoid.

I am using it to compile an APL2 project of significant size to a standalone
executable (with one dll for support). Now that I have learned where the
landmines are it's functioning excellently for me.

Unfortunately it can be difficult to elicit a response from Tilman. I last
sent him a list of bugs over a month ago and he has yet to reply. Earlier
when I installed APL2C on a new computer, it took him well over a month to
reply back with a registration number. So you're pretty much on your own,
but there's enough documentation provided to puzzle it out.

Paul

"MP" <smoak@mis.net> wrote in message
news:bb018685.0403262009.594cc835@posting.google.com...
> Anyone using APL2C? Is the project still active?
> I read at http://www.apl2c.de
> "The APL2C system is available for the Microsoft Windows 9x/NT/2000."
> and
> "APL2C News:
> Windows Version 5.0.3 available for download now!
> APL2C Tutorial "Compiling APL" held at APL 2001 conference
> PDF file available for download (see "Trial Version")
> Coming soon: new Linux and Windows Version with true Unicode (16-bit
> characters) support!"
>
> I heard about it a over a year ago and it looked very good to me
> in more ways than one. Sent an email to Dr. Otto at that time
> saying I was interested in the Linux version and offering my help
> with testing on Linux. Sent another email several months ago asking
> about it again but got no reply.
>
> The site says "Last update on 2002/05/07"
>
> I hope it's still an active project; the Linux version could be
> just what I've been looking for.
>
> Marv in Lexington, KY

cas194

2004-08-03, 8:56 am

I'm intrigued to find that someone is getting useful work out of APL2C. I
spent some time trying to get it to work, with only limited success. I
can't get the editor to work at all...

I have many years' accumulation of APL utilities which use regularly with
APL2, but after loading it with )IN, only a smallish proportion works
without error with APL2C.

Any further info. on how you are using it would be most welcome.

Chris.

Dick Bowman

2004-08-03, 8:56 am

On Mon, 02 Aug 2004 08:27:16 -0400, "cas194" <cas194@aol.com> wrote:

>I'm intrigued to find that someone is getting useful work out of APL2C. I
>spent some time trying to get it to work, with only limited success. I
>can't get the editor to work at all...
>
>I have many years' accumulation of APL utilities which use regularly with
>APL2, but after loading it with )IN, only a smallish proportion works
>without error with APL2C.
>
>Any further info. on how you are using it would be most welcome.
>
>Chris.
>
>
>

I'm not using it - I'd like it to be a success - there are so many
postings here from people still persevering with DOS-hosted flat APLs.
APL2C seemed to offer an attractive low-cost nested-array APL and an
interesting cooption of Tcl/Tk for the GUI stuff.

One significant problem is that the author seems to have gone
incommunicado (or maybe he only talks to paying customers). It would
be good to feel that there was some sort of support environment for
APL2C.

A minor problem (which may be behind your "failure to work") is that
the editor refused to fix while the function contained any SYNTAX
ERROR - which pretty much annihilated my preferred approach to
developing code.

On the whole I thought APL2C was a brave effort which demonstrated
that a "new" APL interpreter was a reasonable thing to hope for - but
it needed (or needs) an infrastructure if people are going to use it
for serious work. But, as I say, my experience was not that of a
paying customer,

Paul Houle

2004-08-03, 8:56 am

As I reported to the group a while back, I put together an application
consisting of over 240 functions (over 800 lines of code) written in APL2C;
it's a character mode emulation of the ancient DOS editor Wordstar.

http://www.paulhoule.com/ws

I'd say it's 95% APL and 5% C (the console I/O stuff is in C).

APL2C has some landmines that one must learn to avoid. Once it's known what
works and what doesn't, a stable app can be achieved. But it takes some
patience. I very nearly gave up myself early on in the process.

It's really too bad the author hasn't the time to further develop it. If it
were more robust it would be an extremely useful tool.

Paul Houle

"cas194" <cas194@aol.com> wrote in message
news:8b85a8b071b74d197770638e90c85419@lo
calhost.talkaboutprogramming.com...
> I'm intrigued to find that someone is getting useful work out of APL2C. I
> spent some time trying to get it to work, with only limited success. I
> can't get the editor to work at all...
>
> I have many years' accumulation of APL utilities which use regularly with
> APL2, but after loading it with )IN, only a smallish proportion works
> without error with APL2C.
>
> Any further info. on how you are using it would be most welcome.
>
> Chris.

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