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From: Robert Bernecky <bernecky@acm.org>
Subject: Re: Programming language vote - results
Date: 1997/10/28
Message-ID: <34565F22.5B66C13E@acm.org>#1/1
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References: <343fbb5a.0@news.iprolink.ch> <344BCED0.2D51@dynamite.com.au>
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To: Jan Karman <karman@knoware.nl>
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Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.apl,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++
Date: 1997-10-28T00:00:00+00:00
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Jan Karman wrote:

> Bernecky's hypothesis
>
> "APL still requires an oddball character set
> "[..]
> "I suspect that if we [the APL design community] had not been so blind to
> the realities
> "of ergonomics, psychology, and display engineering, that we would have
> abandoned
> "the APL character set long ago, and perhaps thereby made APL a far more
> popular
> "language.

> is easily be refuted.
>
> Proof #1
> It would have been as easy for APL vendors to deliver a free, suitable
> keyboard

I am talking about history and what DID happen. There was no serious
attempt by any vendor to make APL fit into the ascii terminal world.
There is NO doubt in my mind that this seriously hampered APL's acceptance
as a popular language in the 70's and 80's.

> I beleive IBM did in the old days, or was it only caps?, and DEC and Data

Decals (to tell you where the right parenthesis key is when it is not where
you expect it to be... Duuhh) did NOT solve the problems of:
   - Using ascii-only terminals
   - transmitting APL programs across ascii-based networks.

> Because knowledge of APL characters is only relevant to programmers, this

Not so. See above. It affects users and system administrators. Ever triedto
explain to someone back in the dark ages why your APL system couldn't print
a report with someone's name in Upper Case and Lower Case because APL
only had upper case and underbarred characters?

> Proof #2, by counter example, i.e. J
> Could you say  e.g.: "Let's give APL common ASCII-characters and it would
> become as popular as Yahoo?"

Read my message again. I was discussing history. What DID and DID NOT
happen. I am not attempting to peddle APL characters in the 90's. It's too late

for that. Marketing and trendiness have taken over from technical superiority.

Bob