Newsgroups: comp.lang.apl
Path: watmath!watserv2.uwaterloo.ca!torn!nott!uotcsi2!news
From: cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca (Christopher Browne)
Subject: Improved J Reference Card 2.0
Message-ID: <1993Mar24.011509.23617@csi.uottawa.ca>
Sender: news@csi.uottawa.ca
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Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, University of Ottawa
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 93 01:15:09 GMT


There's been quite a lot of response to the Reference Card/Language
Summary that I recently posted.  Many kind comments.  Thanks!

A number of little bugs/imperfections were found, and I think I've
stamped all of the specific ones out.

In addition, I've been making some improvements.

a) - I added header/footers, that take the place of the old titling
information.

b) - I've added a table of "alternative spellings;" this is a table of
substitutions that can be made if you've got a "stupid" keyboard that
doesn't have the full ASCII set.  For instance, the following
sorts of identities hold:

(a \+ b) = (a BS.+ b)

(|:#:i.8) = (ST2.NO2.i.8)

i.e. - BS.  == \
       BS1. == \.
       BS2. == \:
and so forth.

The table may be useless to 99% of the population; if there's anyone
who DOES want it, I wouldn't mind hearing about it.

c) - Those foreign conjunctions that are PC specific have been so
marked.  (I think I took out most of the PC specific ones; if someone
wants them back, I'd welcome a modified edition of the table :-)).

d) - There's a number of operators that aren't yet implemented.  I've
put the symbol $\not\exist$ beside them (That's a backwards E with a
stroke through it).  I noticed that it is claimed that E. is not
implemented, which is NOT correct.  It worked for me about 20 minutes
ago.

I have one somewhat bizarre question; what's the purpose of "__"?
It's in STATUS.DOC as one of the unimplemented functions; I can't see
what it would mean.

In another few days, I'd like to release "version 2" of J.TEX.  I'd
welcome suggestions for changes/additions now.

There's definitely room for improvement; any time I look at the
Dictionary, I see details that the current table can't quite show in
its current form (for instance, ";." does quite a bit more than the
table entry can describe).

-- 
Christopher Browne                |     PGP 2.0 key available
cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca           |======================================
University of Ottawa              | Genius may have its limitations, but
Master of System Science Program  | stupidity is not thus handicapped.
