Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!msdsws.enet.dec.com!secrist
From: secrist@msdsws.enet.dec.com ("Richard C. Secrist")
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: RE:      APL
Message-ID: <8907111729.AA05741@decwrl.dec.com>
Date: 11 Jul 89 17:29:40 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 37


	APL terminals use ^N and ^O or whatever to shift-in and out
	of an alternate character set -- it's the same technique
	used by ANSI terminals to shift in and out of the line drawing
	character set.  The trick is to have that character set
	hanging around.

	If you have a DEC VT-2xx or VT-3xx emulator for your Apple of
	whatever flavor, you can download an APL character set into
	the Apple and run with that -- this is supported by things like
	DEC's VAX APL under VMS.

	Two build-it-yourself approaches are to 1) use the Applesoft
	Programmer's Toolkit originally from the dawn of DOS 3.3 to
	grow your own character set, which mapped your stuff into
	the hires screen, or 2) build your own character set under
	the Apple PASCAL system.  Neither of these are any fun, and
	wouldn't be speed deamons, but they'd work.  That or any
	powerful graphics language like GraFORTH or something.  Someone
	did one of these for the Commodore-64 that worked pretty well
	and put it up on CompuServe.

	Even with that done though you're short the keycaps, and so
	you have to go through life with this little chart next to
	you.  Not fun.

	Many APLs become ASCIIable by letting you use "dot command
	mode" to fake APL, which works very well, although it ruins
	the terseness of APL, e.g. .RHO, .IOTA, or something like
	that.  I dunno about the blue flavors of APL, though.

	You can get native APLs for the Amiga and PC, the most notable
	being from STSC, but I don't believe they ever put a product out
	on a 'gs, and certianly not on a ][-class box.

	Hope that helps.
	rcs