British APL Association News

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 8

Situations Filled¶

We are delighted to welcome Geoff Kemish as our new Technical Officer. Geoff is unfortunately away in the USA for the whole of January, but we shall make every effort to obtain his picture in time for the next issue!

Change of Venue¶

Royal Overseas League
Park Place
(off St. James’s Street)
London SW1

After many years holding meetings at Imperial College we have decided that a change of venue is both timely and appropriate.

The Royal Overseas League is centrally situated, two or three minutes walk from Piccadilly and Green Park Underground Station; it provides comfortable meeting rooms and has both a restaurant and a bar. There is also a wide selection of eating and drinking establishments nearby.

In addition to the formal aspect of the meetings there is ample opportunity to either discuss technical matters or to just socialise with other people from the APL community; part of our intention in making this move has been to extend the scope for these casual discussions. One of the main objectives which we have as an Association is to extend the APL community spirit, so if you haven’t been to one of the meetings for a while come and re-establish contact in the new surroundings.

Meeting Dates¶

A consequence of moving is that we have had to shift our meeting dates a little; this will settle down again over the next few months and we will be making information available within VECTOR, by direct mailshots and the Computing Diary Page.

March 15 - Graphics and APL¶

This meeting will cover different ground and approaches to graphics from the January 1984 meeting with which it shares a title; present plans are to emphasise the GKS graphics standard and the IBM path to graphics.

Notice about Elections to the Committee¶

Elections have always been held by simple majority vote of those attending the AGM and Officers have always been elected for a year. Your committee has discussed changes to this arrangement and decided not to recommend any change for the 1985 elections. (The reasons for change would be to be fairer to the distant members by allowing them to vote without having to attend, and to protect the Association against a complete change of Officers which would lose continuity).

Approximately two thirds of our members have attended a meeting in London during the last year, so the committee did not feel justified in changing the election arrangements for 1985 but instead has decided to consult members at the AGM to see whether changes are desired (those not attending may comment by writing to the Secretary).

As an example of the second reason, to plan and run APL86 under one management your committee has had to appoint an APL86 subcommittee which although subsidiary to the Association committee, will hold office until APL86 is over and the accounts cleared up (i.e. certainly until the autumn of 1986). There will be a proposal at the AGM that half the Officers are elected for two years, and that each year from 1986 onwards half the Officers are elected.

The committee intends that members should be well informed about candidates at the next election. Details of candidates are to be circulated three weeks before the election. Every candidate must be proposed and seconded and must provide a brief description (about 100 words) of their suitability and their intentions should they be elected. Every candidate is required to have paid an individual membership fee (currently £6) and to recognise that it is a duty of a committee member to attend every committee meeting and to perform the appropriate tasks.

The posts to be filled by election at the next AGM are: Chairman (who is required to be a member of the British Computer Society), Treasurer, Secretary, Activities Officer (organiser of meetings and special events), Journals Officer (chief editor and organiser of VECTOR), Publicity Officer (who is to arrange for promotion and coverage of the Association’s activities), Technical Officer (who organises technical vetting and reviews of products, articles and papers) and Education Officer (who is to promote education in APL and the use of APL in education). Each officer is encouraged to form a working party of members to help with the job and to provide a deputy to report at any committee meeting that circumstances make it impossible to attend in person. All officers are asked to help with the Association’s work in other ways.

None of the foregoing precludes last minute proposal and seconding (at the AGM) of an individual member in good standing for any office. Please send details of all candidates to be circulated in advance, to the Secretary, [address omitted] to arrive by the end of April 1985.

APL86¶

As you will see from the following Call for Papers, the APL86 Conference and Exhibition will be held at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) from 7-11 July 1986.

As most of you will know, we had planned to hold APL86 at Cambridge. Unfortunately the growing requirements for exhibition space and the conference outgrew the available facilities, and we have had to have a new venue.

UMIST, however, has excellent facilities for a major international conference such as APL86 with a number of modern lecture theatres sited around the exhibition floors. The University, which has a long tradition in computing is in the heart of Manchester, England’s second city, with excellent road and rail access and a major international airport.

More details about APL86 will appear in the next issue of VECTOR, and there will be an APL86 stand at the forthcoming APL85 conference in Seattle. If you might be interested in exhibiting hardware or software at APL86 please ensure that you are on our exhibitors’ mailing list by writing to:

APL Exhibition Organiser,
BISL Conference Department,
British Computer Society,
13 Mansfield Street,
London W1M 0BP.

Call for Papers¶

International Conference on APL and its applications

University of Manchester Institute of Science & Technology
Manchester, England.

July 7th to 11th, 1986.

IMPORTANT DATES:

APL86 will be the first of the annual series of international conferences on the development and applications of APL to be held in England. It will take place at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology from July 7th — 11th, 1986. There will be a simultaneous exhibition by suppliers of APL-based services and products.

The conference will emphasise practical aspects of APL, and “live” presentations to accompany submitted papers will be encouraged by the provision of a wide range of computing and audio-visual equipment.

As is traditional at the APL Conferences, a number of distinguished speakers from both within the APL community and other areas, such as Expert Systems, will be invited to present papers, and lead longer discussion sessions, based around “live” presentations.

The conference will also include a number of tutorial sessions, of interest to both newcomers to APL, and those with more experience in the use of the language.

The conference will have three main themes:

• APL in action, including sessions on the use of APL in Personal Computing, Information Centres and Education. Other sessions currently planned include, for example, Full-screen and Graphics orientated systems, applications of APL in Expert Systems, and programmer productivity tools.
• APL and its environment, including sessions covering, for example, the interactions between APL and its host Operating Systems, APL as a compiled language, APL-dedicated hardware configurations, and the use of APL as an “engine” in systems constructed largely in other languages.
• The APL notation, including sessions covering, for example, experience with the ISO Standard, and with “second-generation” APLs, the influence of array theory on further extensions, the integration of the “second-generation” extensions, and APL as a teaching notation.

The conference Committee are keen to encourage those who might have not previously considered submitting a paper to such a conference to share their experiences with others in the APL community.

Submission of Papers¶

Those intending to submit papers on one of the conference themes must make at least a preliminary submission by June 1st 1985; including a title, an abstract, and an indication of the nature of the accompanying “live” presentation and of the equipment that would be required.

Full draft papers, for consideration by referees, must be submitted by November 1st 1985. Three copies of the paper, which is to be in English and should not exceed 6000 words must be submitted, together with an abstract and a list of keywords for subject identification and classification, and a fuller description of the “live” presentation. One or more referees may request that the presentation is made as part of the judging process.

Notification of the referees’ decisions will be sent out on January 10th 1986. Authors of papers accepted must provide final copies of their papers suitable for photo-reproduction by April 4th 1986.

All papers accepted and received by the final submission deadline will be published in the Conference Proceedings. Other papers will be considered for publication in VECTOR, in the four issues following the conference.

It is intended that prizes will be awarded for the “best” papers and presentations given to the conference.

Further details can be obtained from:

BISL Conference Department (APL86)
The British Computer Society
13 Mansfield Street
London W1M 0PB, England