Re: APL in PC Plus

On Tue, 1 Nov 2005 21:32:34 -0600, Björn Helgason wrote
(in article <1130902354.630291.71120@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>):

[in response to my saying....]

>> I'm always surprised that there are those that somehow feel the need to have
>> a special keyboard in order to use APL.
>
> That is exactly the problem that the members of the APL community are
> so surprised that the rest of the world is having problems

In a way I can liken typing APL on a keyboard without APL keycaps to typing,
say, glyphs in Swedish or French on an "English" keyboard. For example, on my
computer, a Macintosh, I know typing Option-e produces an accent mark but
doesn't advance the cursor. I can then type the letter e and the result will
be an é with an accent.

As for APL, I'm running Dyalog APL under Virtual PC on a Macintosh, the
Dyalog "unified" APL keyboard provides normal access to the characters on the
keytop, the APL glyphs being accessed via a modifier key, in my case the
control key. That is, just typing, say, "a" or "r" produces the letters but
typing control-a or control-r produces an alpha and a rho respectively.

What I am saying is that one can quickly learn to enter the special APL
glyphs on an ordinary keyboard. A special keyboard is not needed.

--
James L. Ryan -- TaliesinSoft

.

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