[comp.lang.icon] WHAT ARE ICONS

goer%sophist@GARGOYLE.UCHICAGO.EDU (Richard Goerwitz) (11/10/90)

      Please forgive me, all those who are knowledgeable, but what are icons
    as applied to computers. I know that they are in plain 'ol English, but what
    are they and what kind of system do they run on?

      No flames please, I might just go and slit my wrists.

Before you do that, make sure to donate some blood to your local hospital,
where it is probably badly needed.

Seriously, though, here's an brief answer to your question:  Icons, as used
in relatively recent computer lingo, refer to symbols on your computer screen
that, when activated in one way or another, function in a way that bears some
analogy to their form.  For instance, what do you think activating a picture
of a trash can does?  Sure:  It trashes something.

Anyway, you have just posted to the Icon group, a mailing list dedicated to
discussion of the Icon programming language.  It's got nothing to do with
those cute pictures on your computer screen (if, that is, you are working
with a windowing system that has them).  Icon is the successor to Snobol4,
and is used by people for general programming tasks, especially those in-
volving heuristic "algorithms," symbol manipulation, and anything to do
with language and text.  It's especially popular among people involved in
nonnumeric computing (in my case, the study of ancient languages).

I hope you don't find this response cause to slit your wrists, by the way.
(Maybe you need to develop a bit thicker skin....)

-Richard

GB03@Lehigh (11/14/90)

@bitnet@lehigh@gb03

It might interest most people to know that BASIC was originally BASIC.
Kemeny and Kurtz got tired of telling people it was only BASIC.  No one
believed the inventors.  They finally came up with Beginners All
Purpose Simplified Code

Ain't history wunderful!?

rob@b15.INGR.COM (Rob Lemley) (11/28/90)

In <13119021:11:45GB03@lehigh.bitnet> GB03@Lehigh writes:

:It might interest most people to know that BASIC was originally BASIC.
:Kemeny and Kurtz got tired of telling people it was only BASIC.  No one
:believed the inventors.  They finally came up with Beginners All
:Purpose Simplified Code

The American Heritage Dictionary (2nd College Edition, 1985) says:

	Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code