Newsgroups: comp.lang.apl
Path: watmath!watserv1!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!wupost!darwin.sura.net!jvnc.net!phage!wchang
From: wchang@cshl.org (Bill Chang)
Subject: Re: Expressiveness of Language
Message-ID: <1992Mar27.030520.775@cshl.org>
Summary: APL?! to come
Sender: news@cshl.org (NO MAIL)
Organization: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
References: <LIBERTE.92Mar20173238@birch.cs.uiuc.edu> <1992Mar23.200055.737@cshl.org> <12056@umd5.umd.edu>
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 92 03:05:20 GMT
Lines: 25

In article <12056@umd5.umd.edu> jph@astro.umd.edu (J. Patrick Harrington) 
writes eloquently of how he, as a scientist, uses APL.  

>   But back to notation. I guess I think visually...
>... and what could be more expressive
>than <- ? And the special symbols are free of the distracting (if subliminal)
>connotations of ASCII characters. I always want to duck when I see "!", I am
>puzzled by"?" and have to look all over for the other half of "{" or "[". 

Interesting point, the subliminal ? and ! ...  Do you think you could settle
for shape ? and iterate ! , assuming the font you use has understated question
and exclamation marks?  (I'm about to post APL?! :-)

>   For now, APL is something to use, and J something of a riddle - it should   
>be as powerful as APL, but how do you even translate your APL phrases into
>this strange stuff? 

Is it possible to redefine J's symbols, without hacking the source?  We can
give names to the less often used functions, but it would really help to have
aesthetically pleasing punctuation marks for things like rho, iota, take, 
indexing, etc.  (Eventually this will happen; it was truly a great day when 
J source was released!)


-- Bill Chang (wchang@cshl.org)           Cold Spring Harbor Lab., NY
