                                   Chapter 19

                                 WHERE TO GET J


      Iverson Software Inc
      watserv anonymous ftp


*========================================
#                        IVERSON SOFTWARE INC.
              33 Major Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2K9
                 Phone (416)925-6096 Fax (416)488-7559


                               ISI NEWS
                              April 1992


        GENERAL

We are pleased at  the response  to  our  series  of  ads  in Computer
Language and in Dr Dobb's Journal,  and will start advertising in Byte
in July.  We will also be advertising in local Toronto publications in
anticipation of the APL93 conference, scheduled for Toronto.

Larger print runs and other factors have  allowed us  to significantly
reduce prices --  apologies to our early customers.  50% discounts are
available to dealers, and to anyone ordering in quantity.

J is alive and well in Britain:  the articles in the January  issue of
Vector sparked considerable interest,  and Paul Chapman's port of J to
the Archimedes (widely used in schools) has led to a recent J workshop
in London,  organized by Anthony Camacho of I-APL and conducted by Dr.
McIntyre.  We  believe that  hands-on  workshops are an  ideal  way to
approach J, and hope to encourage further activities of this sort.


        J

The development of J continues and we are now shipping version 4.1. An
important  addition is J for the PC386  systen,  which includes  a DOS
extender that provides a large workspace and unlimited  object size in
extended and virtual memory.

Another major development is the availability  of the  source code for
the J system,  together with full documentation in A Implementation of
J. This development includes and supersedes LinkJ, which has therefore
been discontinued.

We will continue to port the latest versions of J to  the more popular
machines,  but expect that others will exploit the availability of the
source code to port J to a wider range  of machines.  A number of such
ports have already been made.

We believe that An lmplementation of J,  together with the dictionary,
provides a basis for an  interesting computer  science  course  in the
implementation of a functional programming language.

The system kit for J now includes the new An lntroduction to J instead
of Tangible Math,  which is now available separately. As stated in the
introduction,  "This book is designed to introduce J in a  manner that
makes  it  easily  accessible  to  programmers,  by  emphasizing those
aspects that distinguish it from other languages".

J is ideal for teaching and experimenting with  topics  in mathematics
and programming.  It is a new dialect of APL,  but requires no special
characters.

Printed documentation is copyrighted, but J systems are shareware that
may be used and copied freely.

J is available on many machines, including:

        PC, PC386, 386IX, SUN SPARC,
        MACINTOSH, ARCHIMEDES.

Inquire about ports to further machines.

SYSTEM KIT - $24 - A system diskette plus An lntroduction to J and the
        ISI Dictionary of J.

ISI DICTI0NARY 0F J -  $12 - A complete manual plus 50 brief tutorials
        that use J in a variety of topics (34pp).

AN lNTR0DUCTION  T0  J -$12-  Introduces J in  a manner  that makes it
        accessible  to  programmers,  emphasizing  those  aspects that
        distinguish it from other programming languages (44pp).

PR0GRAMMING IN J - $15 - A general introduction to programming as well
        as an introduction to programming in J (77pp).

TANGIBLE MATH  -$12-  Uses the executable  J notation  to treat topics
        from  elementary  and  high  school  math  in  a  manner  that
        introduces the use of  vectors,  matrices,  and other concepts
        essential in college and more advanced mathematics (34pp).

ARITHMETIC-$18 -From the preface:
        "The thrust of the book might best be appreciated by comparing
        it with Felix Klein's Elementary Mathematics  from an Advanced
        Standpoint. However, I shun the corresponding title Arithmetic
        from  an  Advanced  Standpoint  because  it  would incorrectly
        suggest  that  the  treatment  is  intended  only  for  mature
        mathematicians;   on   the   contrary,   the  use  of  simple,
        consistent,  executable  notation  makes it  accessible to any
        serious student possessing little more than a knowledge of the
        counting numbers" (122 pp).

J S0URCE C0DE -  $90  -  A diskette of J source (in C), accompanied by
        full documentation in An Implementation of J (100pp).






*========================================
#  J5 now at APL Archives at Waterloo

+------------------
| Leroy J. (Lee) Dickey
| <Bq620F.Fq8@math.waterloo.edu> 1992-06-20

Flash:  recent addition:  J5

 ===========================================================================

                                APL, J,
                        and other APL Software
                            at Waterloo

Several versions of APL and J are now available on the file server
known variously as

        watserv1.uwaterloo.ca
        watserv1.waterloo.edu
        129.97.129.140

at the University of Waterloo.   In the directory "languages/apl",
anonymous ftp users will find a lot of good stuff.

An index showing all APL files is available as "languages/apl/index".

The source for J, Version 5, and corresponding executables for dec5500,
mips, next, sgi, sun3, sun4, and vax machines are available.  Some
earlier versions of J are available for Atari ST, Mac, IBM PC,
ATT 3b1, Amiga, PC OS/2, Archimedes, HP, and IBM RS6000.

Several flavors of APL are available, including Sharp APL, I-APL,
RATAPL, and TryAPL2.

Several different APL fonts may be obtained:

        (1) APL2741, a postscript line font
        (2) An X-Windows font
        (3) Two different TeX fonts.

There are some APL workspaces, such as the Toronto Toolkit, a complex
numbers workspace, an accounting package, and one on workspace
interchange that has the feature that the exchange files are human
readable.

There are some back articles from the news group "comp.lang.apl", (not
the most recent ones) and a file called FAQ which answers Frequently
Asked Questions about APL and newsgroup related subjects.

Currently, this service is being provided on an experimental basis, and
there are no promises that it will continue on a long term basis, nor
is there any warantee of serviceability or completeness of the software
distributed from watserv1.

The rest of this announcement is of interest to readers who are
not on internet.

It is hoped that eventually there will be a mail server on watserv1
for this same range of software to those who have e-mail access but
no ftp access, but so far this has not happened.

In the meantime, users who do not have ftp but who do have e-mail may
find one of the services

                BITFTP@PUCC.BITNET
                ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com

to be useful.  The first is of use only to users who have access
to BITNET, and the second will be of use to users who have e-mail
but no access to BITNET, such as unix users on Usenet or users on
of certain commercial services.

To get started with  BITFTP@PUCC.BITNET, send a one word message
"help" to BITFTP@PUCC.BITNET.  Or, simply follow this example:
of this mail message (with no leading blanks)

        To: BITFTP@PUCC.BITNET

        FTP watserv1.uwaterloo.ca UUENCODE
        USER anonymous
        CD languages/apl
        BINARY
        GET index
        QUIT

which was successful in acquiring the index.  Similar messages could
result in receiving the various pieces of software.

Once you have the index, you may see the name of some other file you
want.  For such a file, determine the directory path (``dp'') and
the file name (``fn'').  One example you will have already done:
the file "languages/apl/index" splits up as:

                dp              languages/apl
                fn              index

As another example, if the file

                languages/apl/j/What_is_J

is of interest to you, you would use this combination of directory
path and the file name:

                dp      languages/apl
                fn      What_is_J

Prepare a little file that will become your mail message to pucc:
(As before, no lines of the file have no leading blanks.)







                To: bitftp@pucc.bitnet

                FTP watserv1.uwaterloo.ca UUENCODE
                USER anonymous
                CD dp
                BINARY
                GET fn
                QUIT

Of course, in the above, you replace "dp" by the appropriate directory
path, and you replace "fn" by the file name.  Use your local e-mail to
send the file off.  If all goes as intended, when PUCC gets your mail
message, it does the "ftp" session for you, using the commands you have
supplied.  It wraps the file up in a "uuencode" package, and mails it
to you.  When you get the file, you may have to combine several files
together, remove superfluous blank and mail header lines, and uudecode
the file.

We understand that at this time, PUCC provides this service
only to users at BITNET sites.

However, e-mail users at other sites may be helped by a service
provided by  ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com .  To get started send a one word
message with just the word "help" in the body of the message.  Use no
leading blanks, and use no quotation marks.  You should get back
instructions that will get you started.  The body of your first
message might be something like this:

        connect watserv1.uwaterloo.ca
        chdir languages/apl
        get index
        quit

The service offered by ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com is scheduled to give
priority to first-class mail, so you may find yourself waiting
a day or so for what you want.

 