APL - Programmatic interactive screen manipulation

Author

Programmatic interactive screen manipulation

Patrick

2005-03-11, 8:55 pm

Howdy!

I have APL+Win 3.6 and I'm very happy with it. I don't do anything
terribly sophisticated with it, I just keep it around for sentimental
reasons. APL was my very first programming language when I first went
to college back in '75. I got the CS dept. dean to let me take APL
instead of Basic as an introductory course to programming. [Got an 'A'
for the semester. :o)] It's a long story involving this really
attractive Hawaiian coed who was in CS while I was studying
electronics. Oh, did I mention that this was at the University of
Hawaii? It was kind o'

. :o)

Anyway... I use the interactive interface to APL+Win and write handy
little programs just like I used to back in college when I used an
accoustic coupler to interface a dumb terminal to an IBM 360. Kind o'
quaint to reminisce about those good ol' days.

Anyway... Sorry. I keep getting myself sidetracked. So, what I would
like to be able to do is to clear the output screen from a program.
Some of my APL tools spew quite a lot of numbers and data and I'd like
to be able to clear it away, possibly by outputting some code sequence
to the window... I'm grasping at straws here. I've been through the
online help and can't find anything to suggest that I can do what I'm
trying to do.

I suppose an alternative would be to code a separate output window
using the Windows interface features, but I was hoping to avoid that.
Not that I'm not comfortable programming for Windows. I've done plenty
using C for Windows 3.1 (a long time ago) and C++ for Windows
95/98/Me/NT/XP/2000.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

- Patrick

RAV

2005-03-11, 8:55 pm

On 11 Mar 2005 12:43:26 -0800, "Patrick" <patrick@hagware.com> wrote:

>Howdy!
>
>I have APL+Win 3.6 and I'm very happy with it. I don't do anything
>terribly sophisticated with it, I just keep it around for sentimental
>reasons. APL was my very first programming language when I first went
>to college back in '75. I got the CS dept. dean to let me take APL
>instead of Basic as an introductory course to programming. [Got an 'A'
>for the semester. :o)] It's a long story involving this really
>attractive Hawaiian coed who was in CS while I was studying
>electronics. Oh, did I mention that this was at the University of
>Hawaii? It was kind o'

. :o)
>
>Anyway... I use the interactive interface to APL+Win and write handy
>little programs just like I used to back in college when I used an
>accoustic coupler to interface a dumb terminal to an IBM 360. Kind o'
>quaint to reminisce about those good ol' days.
>
>Anyway... Sorry. I keep getting myself sidetracked. So, what I would
>like to be able to do is to clear the output screen from a program.
>Some of my APL tools spew quite a lot of numbers and data and I'd like
>to be able to clear it away, possibly by outputting some code sequence
>to the window... I'm grasping at straws here. I've been through the
>online help and can't find anything to suggest that I can do what I'm
>trying to do.
>
>I suppose an alternative would be to code a separate output window
>using the Windows interface features, but I was hoping to avoid that.
>Not that I'm not comfortable programming for Windows. I've done plenty
>using C for Windows 3.1 (a long time ago) and C++ for Windows
>95/98/Me/NT/XP/2000.
>
>Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
>
>Thanks,
>
>- Patrick

Not exactly sure what you're trying to do. Are you simply trying to
clear the "current" screen? If so, then #TCFF (# being quad) is all
you need. But if pressing PgUp and still seeing stuff bothers you,
then this (type all on one line) will clear the entire screen buffer:

#WCALL{each}('keybd_event' 17 0 0 0) ('keybd_event' 65 0 0 0)
('keybd_event' 65 0 2 0) ('keybd_event' 17 0 2 0) ('keybd_event' 46 0
0 0) ('keybd_event' 46 0 2 0)

That performs a Ctrl+A (select all), Delete. If that blows up saying
"Undefined function," add the following entry to the [Call] section of
your APLW.INI file:

keybd_event=(Y,Y,I,I)

p

Patrick Hagerty

2005-03-12, 3:55 am

Wow! Thanks a lot! That's exactly what I was looking for.

- Patrick

RAV wrote:

> On 11 Mar 2005 12:43:26 -0800, "Patrick" <patrick@hagware.com> wrote:
>
>
> Not exactly sure what you're trying to do. Are you simply trying to
> clear the "current" screen? If so, then #TCFF (# being quad) is all
> you need. But if pressing PgUp and still seeing stuff bothers you,
> then this (type all on one line) will clear the entire screen buffer:
>
> #WCALL{each}('keybd_event' 17 0 0 0) ('keybd_event' 65 0 0 0)
> ('keybd_event' 65 0 2 0) ('keybd_event' 17 0 2 0) ('keybd_event' 46 0
> 0 0) ('keybd_event' 46 0 2 0)
>
> That performs a Ctrl+A (select all), Delete. If that blows up saying
> "Undefined function," add the following entry to the [Call] section of
> your APLW.INI file:
>
> keybd_event=(Y,Y,I,I)
>
> p

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