APL - APL language special characters

Author

APL language special characters

Christopher C. Stacy

2005-05-14, 3:56 pm

microapl@microapl.demon.co.uk writes:
> And how would we explain to new APL users - who are
> often already put off by the APL-specific symbols

When I was a newbie (in the 70s), I considered the special
characters to be one of the beautiful things about APL.
And when I first saw them, it was the obvious thing that
shouted out that something was going to be very different
from FORTRAN. I was attracted by the special characters.

Do new users today actually dislike the APL characters?
Is this different than most people, decades ago?
Have aesthetics or expectations changed?
Or do they merely dislike not having an APL keyboard?
How the hell do new users learn and remember where
the characters are located on today's keyboards?

Back in the 70s when I did lots of APL, the latest thing was
dot-matrix thermal printers and CRTs, which was nice because
you didn't have to change the typeball (or spinwheel).
The thing that I hated was the messed-up layout on one of
the spinwheel terminals (can't remember which brand it was
that sucked). Today there's no technical reason why we
can't have all the APL symbols we want; the only problem
is remembering where on the keyboard to press for them.

The Lisp computers that I used back in the 80s had extra
shift keys labeled "Top" and "Front", and "Mode Lock",
and had special glyphs printed on the front and top of
the keycaps. Today, we all have enough keys on standard
keyboards that we could use some of them for APL-mode shifting.
And we have editors that could be aware of what you are
typing (for example, automatically shifting your input
mode to ASCII when you begin typing a string literal).
Our editors also let us horizontally move the input cursor.
We could even have a seperate key for doing overstrike.
Seems like maybe all we really need are better keycaps.
I also have some dim recollection of press-apply AP
stickers that you could put onto regular keyboards.

If I wanted to write "\i" I'd program in some new
(APL or not) language de jour, and I would hate it.
Way too hard to read. Yuck.

If I wanted to have to spell out "IOTA", I'd program in Lisp.
(Which is, in fact, what I do.) Better than APL in many ways,
and has nice syntax, but not quite the same feel - can't
lexically pack the operators together as tightly.

Only with the special characters can you compose non-precedential
operators in a way that's fast to read: easy to scan with the
eyes (each operator is instantly distinguished) and not too
verbose (brain doesn't need to read any words or punctuation).
Abstract and concise.

David Golden

2005-05-14, 3:57 pm

Christopher C. Stacy wrote:

> How the hell do new users learn and remember where
> the characters are located on today's keyboards?
>

Well, clearly what we need is a keyboard with little LCDs
embedded in the keys so that the glyphs are reconfigurable :-)

Björn Helgason

2005-05-14, 3:57 pm

David Golden wrote:
> Christopher C. Stacy wrote:
>
>
> Well, clearly what we need is a keyboard with little LCDs
> embedded in the keys so that the glyphs are reconfigurable :-)

On my iPaq I have a soft keyboard on the touchscreen

With Unicode I am not sure how you treat all these chars
Charmap allows you to see them several at a time and find the code for
it at least

Windows solves it nicely by using alt+x after the char or after the
number or after U+xxxx

A soft keyboard seem like a good idea

Christopher C. Stacy

2005-05-14, 3:57 pm

"Björn Helgason" <gosinn@gmail.com> writes:

> David Golden wrote:
>
> On my iPaq I have a soft keyboard on the touchscreen
>
> With Unicode I am not sure how you treat all these chars
> Charmap allows you to see them several at a time and find the code for
> it at least
>
> Windows solves it nicely by using alt+x after the char or after the
> number or after U+xxxx
>
> A soft keyboard seem like a good idea

Well, maybe, but I was actually hoping someone was going
to clue me in about where to obtain the sticky labels,
or something, without having to have custom keyboards
on all my various kinds of computers.

James L. Ryan

2005-05-15, 3:55 am

On Sat, 14 May 2005 10:51:30 -0500, Christopher C. Stacy wrote
(in article <uu0l5g60t.fsf@news.dtpq.com> ):

> Well, maybe, but I was actually hoping someone was going
> to clue me in about where to obtain the sticky labels,
> or something, without having to have custom keyboards
> on all my various kinds of computers.

And then there are those of us that just learn to touch-type APL and don't
need a visual clue such as keytop labelling. When i took typing in high
school the typewriters deliberately had blank keytops so that we were forced
to remember which characters went with which keys.

--
James L. Ryan -- TaliesinSoft

David Golden

2005-05-17, 8:55 pm

Björn Helgason

2005-05-17, 8:55 pm

Christopher C. Stacy

2005-05-17, 8:55 pm

James L. Ryan

2005-05-17, 8:55 pm

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