Path: utzoo!attcan!telly!lethe!torsqnt!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!tank!keith@curry.uchicago.edu From: keith@curry.uchicago.edu (Keith Waclena) Newsgroups: comp.lang.apl Subject: APL Novice Looking fer Wisdom Summary: several questions Keywords: APL; standards; versions; teaching Message-ID: <5509@tank.uchicago.edu> Date: 22 Sep 89 20:48:27 GMT Sender: news@tank.uchicago.edu Reply-To: keith@curry.uchicago.edu (Keith Waclena) Organization: TIRA / UofC Lines: 47 I have just acquired I-APL/PC (from SIMTEL20) for my clone, and am happily trying to learn some APL (partly to use it a calculator but mainly to compare APL idioms to functional programming idioms). Now I have some questions about APL I was hoping the net could answer. 1. Versions / Standards of APL: briefly, what are the significant difference between ANSI/BSI/ISO Standard APL, APL2, and ``Dictionary APL''? 2. Is there any standard for the stored format of APL workspaces? 3. Is there any standard for the APL character set? 4. Is there any standard for the layout of APL characters on a keyboard? 5. Is there any standard for an ASCII transliteration of APL characters? Does Dictionary APL have anything to do with this? 6. Can anyone give me an exact citation for a recent article by Iverson on Dictionary APL? I think it was in the *Quote Quad*, but I need the exact volume/number or date to get it out of our library's bindery... 7. I'm interested in math textbooks that use APL notation; does anybody have any good ones to recommend? Has anybody reading this ever taken a math class that used APL as the main notation? (When I say ``standard'' here in lowercase, I mean ``de facto standard or otherwise''.) Answers to these questions should help me to understand some of the remarks I've read in the *Quote Quad* and elsewhere; if anybody could answer with specific reference to I-APL, that would be great! Thanks in advance, Keith -- Keith WACLENA keith@curry.uchicago.edu GLS / TIRA / U of Chicago keith%curry@uchimvs1.bitnet 1100 E.57th.St Chi IL 60637 USA ...!uunet!curry.uchicago.edu!keith "An assignation is the commonest form of confrontation." -- Lindsey and v.d. Meulen, _Informal Introduction to Algol 68_