ljdickey@water.waterloo.edu (Lee Dickey) (12/18/87)
In article <7020@ut-ngp.UUCP> wmartin@ngp.UUCP (Wiley Sanders) writes: > > I got a mailing from "The Spencer Organization" (sounds like >a rock promoter!) today advertising the new, reduced price >for Mac version of their APL68000 - $99. Sounds like a good deal, >but then, who knows >what the implementation is like. I would like to elicit responses >from those who already have APL for the Mac. Email, please, and I >will summarize and repost. I'm interested in the speed, memory >capacity, and how they handle that bizarre APL character set. > Thanks for your help. I have watched for your repost, and have not seen one, so please forgive me for being so bold as to post for myself. I have been using APL.68000 for some time now. My first experience with it was on an early "Pixel" machine that runs some flavor of UN*X and one uses "ordinary" APL terminals. Now, as you have seen, there are ports of APL.68000 to micros with bit-mapped screens, such as the Mac, the Amiga, and the Atari ST. The APL is *E X C E L L E N T*. The code is mature and sound ... I have been using release 6.xx on my home machine for over a year now and have found NO BUGS in the APL code. There are a few minor problems with the interface to the fancy features of the micro, but I believe these problems will be solved. The price used to be $395, and that was a bargain. It is now $99, and the company offers a FREE run time license to developers. It claims to be, and I believe it to be true, that it is the FASTEST APL available today on a micro. Of course the reason for the speed is that it is all written in assembly code. That does not help the company do ports to new hardware, but when they do get it, it is really fast. As to the memory capacity, it depends on what memory you have and what accessories you run. I have a 1 Meg machine run several accessories and APL.68000 gives me a 735 K workspace. How does APL.68000 handle the composite (overstrike) characters? There is a special keyboard mapping that allows you to get composites by pressing an alternate key, (the equivalent of another shift key), to get these things. That is no problem at all. For this, APL.68000 uses the same mapping that most modern APLs use; that is, the keyboard mapping used when a 327x is connected to APL2, and keyboard mapping used by the most recent releases of WATCOM APL, STSC APL*PLUS, or IPSA APL, all of which run on the IBM PC. However, each of these last three requires either a character generator chip or some sort of graphics adapter card. You, on the other hand, (with your Mac, Amiga, or Atari) have a bit mapped screen, and can put up a glyph of any shape at all, without the necessity of investing in a character generator chip. Thus the product is all software. No extra hardware needed at all. This has an added bonus for users of APL on mainframes. For years there has been a scarcity of APL terminals. That now ceases to be a problem, because APL.68000 for the Mac and the Amiga comes with a terminal emulator build in. Well, there is my 2 cents worth. I have no connection with the company offers this APL, I just use it and I like it. -- L. J. Dickey, Faculty of Mathematics, University of Waterloo. ljdickey@watmath.UUCP UUCP: ...!uunet!watmath!ljdickey ljdickey%water@waterloo.edu ljdickey@watdcs.BITNET ljdickey%water%waterloo.csnet@csnet-relay.ARPA
thisted@gargoyle.UChicago.EDU (Ronald A. Thisted) (12/19/87)
In article <1310@water.waterloo.edu> ljdickey@water.waterloo.edu (Lee Dickey) writes: >In article <7020@ut-ngp.UUCP> wmartin@ngp.UUCP (Wiley Sanders) writes: > >I have been using APL.68000 for some time now. >...The APL is *E X C E L L E N T*. >...It is now $99, and the company offers FREE run time license to developers. >...APL.68000 for the Mac and the Amiga comes with a terminal emulator build in. > Could you please post the address of this company, as i (and presumably others) have not been able to find out how to get the product. Ron Thisted Dept of Statistics The University of Chicago thisted@galton.uchicago.edu ...!ihnp4!gargoyle!galton!thisted
rusty@vertigo.UUCP (M.W.HADDOCK) (12/19/87)
In article <831@gargoyle.UChicago.EDU> thisted@galton.uchicago.edu (Ronald A. Thisted) writes: >In article <1310@water.waterloo.edu> ljdickey@water.waterloo.edu (Lee Dickey) writes: >>In article <7020@ut-ngp.UUCP> wmartin@ngp.UUCP (Wiley Sanders) writes: >> >>I have been using APL.68000 for some time now. >>...The APL is *E X C E L L E N T*. >>...It is now $99, and the company offers FREE run time license to developers. >>...APL.68000 for the Mac and the Amiga comes with a terminal emulator build in. > >Could you please post the address of this company, as i (and presumably >others) have not been able to find out how to get the product. The US distributor for MicroAPL's APL.68000 is Spencer Organization, Inc. PO Box 248 Westwood, NJ 07675 (201) 666-6011 I just got mine the other day. Watch it though, they tag on 4% for using a credit card and I don't believe they told me about it when I ordered. They used to sell for a coupla bucks (a give-away at APL-87 in Dallas this past spring/summer) a demo disk which was pretty much the same as the distribution disk sans workspace/function saving to disk. MicroAPL is a company located in the heart of London, England. APL.68000 is version level 6 and thus is quite stable. An APL2 is in the works according to Bill Spencer. I'm just re-learning APL on my Amiga but I'd sure like to hear from others and their experiences. Happy Holidays folks! -Rusty- -- Rusty Haddock {{uunet!likewise!}cbosgd,rutgers!moss}!vertigo!rusty AT&T-IS Consumer Products Laboratories - Human Factors Laboratory Holmdel, New Joysey 07733 (201) 834-1023 -- Being schizophrenic is better than living alone. --