News from Sustaining Members

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 22

The category of “Sustaining Membership” of the British APL Association is available to any company trading in APL products and services; it is seen as a formal statement that these companies regard APL as more than simply another programming language, and is intended to promote increased interest and activity in APL and in the Association.

As well as receiving public acknowledgement for their sponsorship of the Association, sustaining members receive bulk copies of VECTOR to distribute to their customers, and are offered the opportunity to submit news material for this section of the Journal. They are also able to submit announcements for Association meetings (subject to the approval of the Activities Officer) and are invited to inform APL users of their products via seminars and articles.

The Committee of the British APL Association would like to acknowledge the generous financial support of the following organisations that have become Association Sustaining Members. In many cases these organisations also provide manpower and administrative assistance to the Association at no cost.

APL People Ltd.¶

APL People’s consultancy team, led by Tim Perry and David Alis, has continued to consolidate its studies of APL on the IBM PC which they began in 1982. They have now successfully downloaded several extensive systems from an IBM mainframe using tapes, which have proved much faster and more convenient than directly via the IRMA board for the large amounts involved. These systems were converted to APL*PLUS on the PC and are working very well, allowing far more users than before. They have also developed the PC software to allow the swift transfer, via IRMA, of smaller amounts of data or programs, directly between the systems — and are now transferring the elegant colour graphics software, which excited so much interest at the December APL exhibition, from the PC to a version on a standard IBM mainframe.

On the ‘people’ side, the employment agency has extended their activities from their original base of supplying consultants on a contract basis, to matching people in APL to the many permanent jobs available. This has proved a popular move within the industry and has expanded so much that we have had to move into temporary office space almost a year ahead of a planned move in 1985. (That is why we retain our familiar address but have a new telephone number.) This side of our activities will be expanding still further in 1985, with more people (not computers, please note) involved. Currently new job opportunities and CVs are arriving at about the same rate — we wish they all matched up, but we do our best with □ pegs and ○ holes.

APL*PLUS Limited¶

APL*PLUS Ltd. announce Release 4.0 of their APL development system for the IBM PC and IBM PC/AT. This allows soft character-set generation for monitors with IBM colour graphics compatible adaptors. DOS 3.0 is fully supported, as are the IBM PC/AT and most of the common PC compatibles.

Keyboard facilities and full-screen editing are improved, and several commands such as )LOAD and )COPY have been substantially speeded up. Graphics displays can now be saved for rapid recall, and the memory scrolling is also faster. Finally there are two major additions to the language which now allows ‘ambivalent functions’ and the ‘equivalence’ primitive.

Existing users can upgrade from Release 3 for £95 (plus VAT); the price includes two floppy disks and the necessary extra documentation.

Dyadic Systems Ltd.¶

In January, Dyadic unveiled a major new release of Dyalog APL, Version 3.0. The event chosen for the announcement was the Uniforum conference and exhibition in Dallas, USA.

Version 3.0 is the result of a major project to optimise performance, and is at least twice as fast as the previous release, with certain operations showing a ten-fold improvement in speed. Several important new enhancements have also been added.

Dyalog APL now follows the same conventions for displaying arrays as IBM’s APL2. Simple arrays of two or more dimensions that are too wide to fit on the screen are now ‘folded’ by row or by page as appropriate, rather than by line as at present. Not only is this neater, but the rules for wrap-around are now consistent throughout. Nested arrays are shown pictorially, as in APL2, in a way designed to show structure as well as contents. Because nested arrays may contain both text and numeric data, this feature can be used to produce simple reports without the need for special formatting primitives.

At Uniforum, Dyadic also demonstrated a pre-release of Cisigraph-C, a new graphics package for Dyalog APL. Cisigraph-C has been developed by Cisi, the Dyalog APL distributor for France. It is derived from Cisigraphe, Cisi’s mainframe VSAPL product which is widely used by timesharing customers in France and throughout the world. The new Cisigraph-C takes advantage of Dyalog APL’s unique auxiliary processor interface, and follows GKS and SIGGRAPH Core standards. Cisigraph-C is a hybrid system with all its GKS primitives and device drivers written in ‘C’, while its business graphics functions remain in APL. This gives it the speed of compiled graphics packages coupled with the power and flexibility of APL.

Dyadic is planning a series of seminars beginning in April to introduce Version 3.0 and to demonstrate Cisigraph-C. Anybody who is interested in attending one of these seminars, or who would like a copy of the new Dyalog APL Newsletter, should contact Lesley Gould at Dyadic.

MicroAPL Ltd.¶

The most important development at MicroAPL is the release of APL for the Sinclair QL. Based on MicroAPL’s existing APL.68000 products, QL/APL comes in two versions. These are a new keyword version of the language — specially designed to convert users from BASIC to APL — and a conventional APL character set version. These products cost £99.95 and £129.95 respectively, including VAT. QL/APL has been approved by Sinclair Research for use on the QL.

As well as being a full implementation of the language, with no restrictions, QL/APL offers a number of exciting language enhancements. In addition to such productive features as error trapping, commercial formatter, component filing system, and a very wide range of system functions, QL/APL offers excellent colour screen handling support, direct access to the QL colour graphics facilities, and special features to allow APL use of multiple windows on the screen. QL/APL will run on the basic 128 KB QL, giving around 28 KB of APL workspace, but will also take advantage of extra RAM if this is fitted. This means that workspace sizes of up to 512 KB can be achieved. Execution speed is excellent. being about one-third the speed of MicroAPL Sage and Spectrum systems — which makes QL/APL faster than typical 8088-based micros.

I.P. Sharp Associates Limited¶

As a part of its continuing expansion plans I.P. Sharp are moving into new and larger offices just off Victoria Street. As from the 1st February the new address will be:

I.P. Sharp Associates Limited
10 Dean Farrar Street
LONDON SW1

Tel: 01-222 7033

The IBM PC XT/370 is now available in this country and runs Sharp APL 25-40 times faster than on an IBM XT. This is certainly fast enough for most applications. Sharp APL on the XT/370 is fully compatible with mainframe Sharp APL allowing code to be developed and run in either environment.

A new 6670 laser printer will be installed in January greatly improving the quality of the high speed print service. Output can be produced directly on A4 with a wide variety of print sizes and fonts.

I.P. Sharp have appointed The Islamun Company as their agents in Bahrain and a new node of I.P. Sharp’s communications network IPSANET is being installed. Local dial access should be available in Bahrain in March.

APL*PLUS Limited to Transfer to Cocking & Drury¶

Cocking & Drury Limited and STSC Inc, today announced the signing of an Agreement in principle under which STSC would transfer to Cocking & Drury the assets of APL*Plus Limited. The proposed transfer is subject to execution of a definitive Agreement.

APL*Plus Limited has operated since 1979 as a subsidiary of Maryland-based STSC to market and support the parent company’s APL-based software products and services. According to John W Myrna, Senior Vice President of STSC’s APL products and services business unit, the proposed transfer will align STSC’s UK operations with that of its other international operations which are managed through distributors and agencies. "We believe that the customers of APL*Plus Limited will not only retain continuous service, but will realise even greater support in the future with Cocking & Drury," stated Myrna.

Romilly Cocking, Director, of Cocking & Drury, said "We are confident that the complimentary strategies of our two companies will strengthen our delivery of APL services to our customers and will enable broader coverage in the microcomputer and mainframe APL software market. We have been dealers for APL*Plus micro products for some while now, and we see the new move as a natural development of our existing relationship."

STSC, an industry leader in the development of the APL programming language, provides APL-based software in the microcomputer and mainframe environments, and publishes micro software written by independent developers through its APL products and services business unit. Other STSC business units include Execucom Systems Corporation and Logistics Decision Systems. STSC has branch offices in major US cities and licenses software through distributors in several countries worldwide.

Cocking & Drury are Europe’s leading APL software house. Their services and products include consulting, education, turnkey systems, support and the marketing and supply of software that they or others have written.