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Path: utzoo!watmath!watapl
From: watapl@watmath.UUCP (.)
Newsgroups: net.lang.apl
Subject: Re: Sharing APL programs
Message-ID: <7815@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 21-May-84 20:44:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: watmath.7815
Posted: Mon May 21 20:44:37 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 22-May-84 19:04:14 EDT
References: <198@hou2f.UUCP>, <7644@watmath.UUCP>, <7681@watmath.UUCP>, <284@nbs-amrf.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 29

(1)  The largest APL conversion that I know about was in LA.  The Los
Angeles Community College District changed from an IBM to a Honeywell
in 1980.  About 2200 workspaces were moved.  A lot of them were CAI.
Fortunately, the receiving APL was more powerful than the sending APL,
in that it could execute expressions and system commands.

(2)  There are, apparently, several APL's that will run on the Xerox
9000 (Serius ?) machine.  Someone I know uses the microcomputer version
of WSIS to move workspaces from one version of APL to another by
writing out a text file that has a representation of all of the
functions and variables in the workspace.  This is every bit as
powerful as WSIS, the difference being that ordinary graphic text
characters are used to encode the bit stream.

(3)  At the University of Waterloo there is a utility to move
workspaces back and forth between the Honeywell and the IBM
mainframes.  It uses the WSIS.  No attempt is made to detect
"non-standard" programs.

(5)  Vanguard APL has a built in utility function that writes ISO
standard WSIS files (they have an extended character set).

(6)  WATCOM APL has system commands  "IN"  and  "OUT"  that write
Q-type CRV's.  (The Q-types are exeQutable.)

(7)  I think that IBM APL2 also has some  IN  and  OUT  system
commands.

(8)  Sharp APL has workspace transfer utilities that use WSIS.