Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!maytag!water!ljdickey
From: ljdickey@water.waterloo.edu (Lee Dickey)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.apl
Subject: Re: distributable apl source
Message-ID: <2601@water.waterloo.edu>
Date: 21 Aug 89 11:54:27 GMT
References: <RAULMILL.89Aug17191026@usc.edu>
Reply-To: ljdickey@water.waterloo.edu (Lee Dickey)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 63

In article <RAULMILL.89Aug17191026@usc.edu> raulmill@usc.edu (Raul Rockwell) writes:
 > To: jpainter@tjp.East.Sun.COM (John Painter - Sun BOS Hardware)
 > In-Reply-To: jpainter@tjp.East.Sun.COM's message of 9 Aug 89 20:42:15 GMT
 > Subject: PD APL (or copyrighted for public use)
 > 
 > I think that you might be able to take part in the International APL
 > project.  This is a public domain APL which is being ported to a bunch
 > of different machines.  I-APL has a sort of FORTH-like kernel, with
 > the rest of the language built up from there.  It is designed for
 > rapid porting, rather than rapid computation.  Version 1 was designed
 > around the 16-bit address bus machine architecture, version 2 is
 > designed around the 32-bit address bus architecture.
 > 
 > The interpreter was written by a man named Paul Chapman.  If you had
 > been at the SIG-APL conference of the ACM (last week, in New York),
 > you could have talked to him (and lots of other people involved in
 > this or similar projects).  The best address I have for him is:
 > 
 > 			      IAPL Ltd.,
 > 			  2, Blenheim Road,
 > 			     St. Albans,
 > 			    Hertfordshire
 > 			      AL1 4NR UK
 > 
 > You would probably want to address the project, rather than Paul
 > Champman, as I don't think he is directly in charge of ports to other
 > machines.

Raul is right on most counts.  I think that Paul has been on Boston
this past week, and I know that he hoped to be able to work with
someone there to create the C code from the (Forth-like) DE source.
He had some pretty clear ideas about how this could be done, and he
is was talking about trying to see Stoneman at the FSF.

These good things can be said about I-APL:

	1) It is an ISO Standard APL conforming implementation of APL.
	The code was written after the standard was available in draft
	form.  (Paul found some bugs in the standard.)

	2) It has built in Direct Definition, and is the only APL
	I know of that has this feature.
	This is a conforming extension to ISO Standard APL.

	3) The work was supported by private donations.

	4) Several publications have come out of the project,
	including

		An Encyclopedia of APL, by Garry Helzer.
		An APL Tutorial, by Linda Alvord and Norman Thomson.

	5) The run-time code is FREE.

My only question about what Raul wrote above has to do with copyright.
I thought that the I-APL organization was holding the copyright, but
the run-time packages are distributed free of charge.

-- 
    L. J. Dickey, Faculty of Mathematics, University of Waterloo.
	ljdickey@water.UWaterloo.ca	ljdickey@water.BITNET
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	ljdickey@water.waterloo.edu