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BAA-GUI Workshop: November 26th 1993

Vector 10:1, page 11

APL community user interfaces

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 11

British APL Association News

BAA-GUI Workshop: November 26th 1993

In order to learn effectively to program for a graphical user interface, with APL or any other language, you need to have a certain level of knowledge and experience, to say nothing of confidence. The November meeting of the BAA will be an all day workshop designed to give you that experience and confidence. You will learn enough about GUI programming to go away and develop an application yourself. You will then be able to work more quickly at solving application problems without getting bogged down in irrelevant technical details.

Part of the ‘hump’ that most users have to get over is the change from controlling the user to being controlled by him. This has significant implications for system and program design. The UK users will be showing what those implications are and explaining how they have adapted to them.

The major interpreters for personal computers will be covered. There will be parallel streams covering APL*Plus II v5/6, Dyalog APL/W and APL.68000 with:

  • Patrick Parkes (the man who wrote the GUI interface for APL*Plus II v5) or an alternative speaker from Manugistics.
  • Peter Donnelly. A director of Dyadic and a designer of Dyalog APL/W.
  • David Eastwood. Managing director of MicroAPL, and an experienced teacher of APL programming techniques.

To show how the interfaces actually are being used and to give some examples from real systems we will have:

  • David Piper from Eagle Star. David is a regular contributor to Vector on system design topics.
  • Adrian Smith from Nestlé. Adrian is the author of ‘APL, A Design Handbook for Commercial Systems’ and has worked hard over the years to better understand the relationship between people and computers.

The workshop will be based on tutorials in which the speaker will present methods to the workshop and then the delegates will try them out on their computers. Each session will be about three hours long, broken at convenient times by coffee or tea breaks. Lunch will be provided and there will be ample opportunity for the delegates to mingle and discuss any aspects of the work with each other and with the speakers.

The venue is not yet fixed but will be within striking distance of central London. There will be a charge of £75 per head to cover the cost of machine hire and catering. In order to plan effectively we need to know the number of people who intend to come, and the streams in which they are interested. Please use the booking form on page 51.