Technical Editorial: BAA Public Domain Software Library

by Dave Ziemann and Jonathan Barman

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 93

At APL86 the BAA proudly announced their latest project, the Public Domain Software Library. We hope that the library will become the definitive source for public domain software of interest to APL programmers. The BAA have not embarked upon a project of this kind before, and so for the first six months we will be offering a restricted service; only software exchangeable on DOS-format disks will be offered, and we will not undertake the distribution of any paper documentation. Although the software will be free, the disk on to which it will be copied and the postage has to be paid for. Charges are expected to be quite low as it will be possible to purchase the disks in bulk. At this early stage, the software distribution procedure has not yet been finalised, so only the mechanism for donating software will be described. Watch for full details in the next issue of Vector.

The basis of the Software Library is the APL 86 Software Exchange. This produced 16 items, many of which are of a substantial size. A directory of the software available will be a feature of this and future issues of Vector. Although each item in the directory has an abstract which describes briefly what is available, we will publish reviews explaining the purpose and use of selected software in more detail.

Whilst briefly scanning through all the software we kept on coming across things that looked really useful, or had to be saved to be played with later, until we ran out of disk space! Not everything is APL, there are some really good games/play items in machine code, and some useful DOS utilities.

A project of this sort needs plenty of activity to keep it alive, so it is essential that your contributions keep on coming in. Mel Chapman, our treasurer, has kindly agreed to be postbox for any software that you wish to send in before the arrangements are finalised. Details are at the end of the Software Library listing.