GNU APL 1.4 released

[Jürgen Sauermann]

Hello,

I am happy to announce that GNU APL 1.4 has been released.

This release contains:

* an interface to mySQL and Postgres databases (thanks to Elias)

* two component file systems as demanded by ISO 13751 (thanks to Blake and David)

* a centralized server for shared variables (APserver)

All bugs reported before 8/6/2014 were fixed.


The GNU APL project lives at: http://www.gnu.org/software/apl
and can be downloaded from: ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/apl/ or any GNU mirror.

Bug reports and other suggestions are welcome at bug...@gnu.org.

Have fun!

Dr. Jürgen Sauermann
Author and Maintainer of GNU APL

[Jürgen Sauermann]

Hello again,

unfortunately the original announcement for GNU APL 1.4 was incorrect.

It should have said SQLite instead of mySQL.

Sorry for the confusion,

Jürgen Sauermann

[Blake McBride]

Just a side note - I have ported a bunch of production code to GNU APL.
GNU APL is not a toy. It is very complete, and quite reliable. Also,
given the included component file system, as well as the available keyed
file system, GNU APL can be used in any APL application. It is a really
nice system.

Blake

> Dr. J�rgen Sauermann

[Dirk Laurie]

I installed apl_1.4-1_amd64.deb on a standard Ubuntu 14.04 LTS system
and typed 'apl' from a terminal window. The banner came up, followed
by a reverse-video line containing a flashing cursor in the expected
place. I typed in +/1 2 3 4 5. I could not read the answer, which was
in a very dark colour on a black background, but after changing the
terminal colour scheme from "Use colors from system theme" to "black
on light yellow", I could see 15.

However, I could not discover, even after reading the manpage, what
I need to do in order to enter APL characters and eventually typed
)OFF. This worked, but left the terminal in a different state to what
it was before I typed 'apl', so I needed to say 'reset'.

At this stage, therefore, I am not in a position to confirm that
Gnu APL is a useful product.

[lok...@gmail.com]

GNU APL itself does not concern itself with the input of APL-specific symbols. That's the responsibility of the input method.

There are generally three different approaches one can take:

1) Set up an APL input mode in X. I never bothered doing this, so I can't
really help there.

2) Use Emacs and use gnu-apl-mode. The Emacs mode provides two different input
methods, one being Quail-based and the other using the Super key.

3) Use aplwrap. This tool gives you the user interface you probably were
looking for: https://github.com/ChrisMoller/aplwrap

Regards,
Elias

[David Lamkins]

Now there's a fourth option. As much as I like gnu-apl-mode and aplwrap (I use both on a daily basis), I felt like there ought to be a more lightweight approach.

Today I wrote `akt`, the APL Keyboard Translator.

https://github.com/TieDyedDevil/akt

This small C program simply reads stdin and writes stdout. It takes advantage of the fact that most modern terminal emulators will map the Alt key to send an ESC prefix; therefore APL characters are seen by `akt` as a two-character sequence. `akt` maps this sequence to the Unicode character expected by GNU APL.

Long story short:

$ akt | apl

adapts your keyboard to generate the proper characters for GNU APL.

Caveat: I've only built and tested this on my Fedora 20 Linux systems. YMMV. If you're so inclined to create patches for other Unix-like platforms, I'll be happy to merge them.

[Jürgen Sauermann]

Dirk,

the man page for GNU APL is only showing the command line options for GNU APL. GNU projects normally provide their information in info pages and not in man pages.

If you had looked at the info page instead, i,e,

info apl

then chapter 1.4 would have revealed that there is a file called 'preferences' in which colors and other user preferences can be configured, and where that file is located.

In the 'preferences' file itself there is a section called "OUTPUT COLORING" in which the settings for colors are described. The next section contains example settings for terminals with dark backgrounds.

Another file shipped with GNU APL is called README-3-keyboard. This file explains different methods for setting up your keyboard for APL.


/// Juergen