Newsgroups: comp.lang.apl
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From: wchang@cshl.org (Bill Chang)
Subject: Re: APL slash bang (Repost)
Message-ID: <1992Mar23.140955.20651@cshl.org>
Summary: Semantic Differences
Sender: news@cshl.org (NO MAIL)
Organization: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
References: <1992Mar19.190314.27860@csi.jpl.nasa.gov> <1992Mar19.220251.29999@cshl.org> <1992Mar20.030250.15467@watson.ibm.com>
Date: Mon, 23 Mar 92 14:09:55 GMT

In article <1992Mar20.030250.15467@watson.ibm.com> gerth@watson.ibm.com 
(John Gerth) writes:
>From an historical perspective I can't really see that dumping the
>symbol set in favor of ASCII would necessarily do much for easing
>the task of automatic transliteration among dialects.  Language 
>designers might just as well seize on the same keywords for semantically
>different concepts as they did on the same symbols...  
>
>Even among relatively similar dialects this can happen.  I distinctly
>remember a visit by Bob Smith (designer of STSC's NARS system) to
>reconcile with Jim Brown its differences with APL2 and, of all
>things, there was no agreement about the definition of the result
>of the "depth" function.  The debate was cordial, but in the end
>no one was convinced and the two system went on separately.  Although
>it cannot be proven, I believe the result would've been the same
>if the function was literally spelled "depth" instead of symbolically
>represented by the monadic use of the equivalence triple-bar.
>
>Anyway, there's plenty of good debate in the ASCII v. symbol discussion
>without this sidetrack.
>
>
>-- 
>/John

Thanks for the sidetrack.

I agree semantics is the real problem.  And economics.  It is far from 
clear that APL vendors would benefit in the short run from a reconciliation.  

The only way to do this is for a committee of users to decide on the names.
Since there are so few good names, the assignments have to be impartial.
That's why I'm endorsing "initials": c. for enclose, o. for box/objectify
(at least both look good).  Now the real situation is much more complicated.
(A fundamental disagreement on types is whether or not '' equals iota 0.  
The two ='s must be given different names.)  I don't know if _all_ the 
differences can be "resolved" by giving them different names/abbreviations/
initials; where can I find a comprehensive list of these differences?

I said earlier that each company must invent new, unique symbols and rename
all their non-ISO features in these symbols.  Then there will be less 
confusion on paper at least.  In order to use or to talk about these symbols
on the net for example, an ASCII solution must be devised.  Hence APL/!.

I do believe glyphs are important, and _personal_ glyphs will hopefully 
be incorporated into the next generation of (notebook/pen-based) computers.  
(Chinese has thousands of glyphs; the language is very rich :-)  Now APL 
has a head start in this regard!  But for the next five years at least, 
we need a stop-gap measure to foster discussions and the teaching of APL.
Without such efforts APL will not survive...

-- Bill Chang (wchang@cshl.org)
