News from Sustaining Members

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 13

APL People Limited¶

Due to demand from the manufacturing industry, the estimating package, PEFAC (which is written in APL) is now being extended to cover financial estimating as well as time estimating. The company that originally developed the product, H Walton Technical Systems Limited (founded by Herbert Walton - first Chairman of the British APL Association), is being renamed APL Manufacturing Limited.

We have no plans to change the name of APL People however, and it will continue to provide the same high level of service as before, helping clients find suitably qualified people for permanent vacancies and for contract assignments.

Despite the recession, we have placed a record number of people in jobs in 1990, and plan to do even better in ’91! We currently have a good selection of APL consultants registered with us for contract work and are always pleased to visit clients to discuss their APL requirements in detail with them. Companies contemplating recruiting ‘APLers’ or with development work in APL planned for the New Year should contact me, Jill Moss on 0225 462602 to book a free consultation with myself or one of my colleagues.

Cocking and Drury Ltd¶

Having just completed the introduction of APL*PLUS II Version 3 we are now shipping upgrades to APL*PLUS PC Version 10 - reviewed on page 67 in this issue.

This release marks ten years of APL micro technology and the enhancements are significant. Support for Windows 3 with the ability - on an appropriate machine - to have an APL session running while you work with other software or to have two APL sessions running simultaneously. The inclusion of ⎕NA to call non-APL subroutines written in C or FORTRAN. Support for mice.

January will also see the launch of a new release of the APL*PLUS UNIX product. This release uses X Windows on SUN 4 stations, the DEC RISC platforms and the new IBM RS/6000. Release 4 should also include enhancements to the external processor interface that allow passing of nested arrays between APL and an external processor. There will also be a new APL User Interface specifically written for X Windows that will allow:

• keyboard handling compatible with APL*PLUS PC and II
• Full Screen Handling, with colour, compatible with APL*PLUS PC and II
• Faster APL output and ⎕WPUT.
• The inclusion of ⎕WIN.

To complete the round of product updates Version 7 of the APL*PLUS System for the Mainframe has now been announced for release now for VM and first quarter 1991 for MVS. And STSC have announced a new product - Network SHAREFILE. This offers users true networking capabilities among remote sites as well as across multiple servers.

You will probably see announcements soon that Cocking & Drury have become UK dealers for Digitalk Inc of Los Angeles - developers of the Smalltalk/V line of object-oriented programming language and development environment.

This does not mean we are turning our backs on the STSC APL*PLUS products - the list of new releases coming out of Rockville means there is plenty of opportunity for further development there. It is quite some time since we have noticed such a strong level of interest in these products, both for the APL*PLUS II System and particularly for the UNIX software. We are hoping to recruit another support consultant in the New Year to assist Dave Phillips with the growing level of APL support.

MicroAPL Ltd¶

As we look back over the last quarter of 1990, we have been pleasantly surprised by the reception given to APL.68000 Level II. Copies of the software have been shipped to most countries in Europe as well as the USA, Japan and Canada. At the time of writing, sales of the Macintosh and Atari versions are running neck and neck with the Amiga lagging considerably. Whilst we expect sales of the Amiga version to catch up as the sales in the USA (our biggest Amiga market) build up, it is interesting to see the continuing strong sales of the Macintosh version.

MicroAPL has begun to plan our upgrade program for next year and we hope to announce details in a forthcoming Vector, but users of our Atari software may care to note that work is in hand on an overhaul of the Atari versions of our software. Both our interpreters (Level I and Level II) make use of the same Supervisor (Operating System interface) on any given port and the work on the Atari ST will, for example, apply equally to the Level I and Level II versions.

Our free runtime policy continues to attract a steady number of licence applications ranging from Real Estate analysis to Music via Restaurant Menu evaluation. Sales of APL.68000 (both versions) into the educational sector continue to be strong, with as much as 30% of our sales going to Universities and Colleges. Readers who use APL in educational establishments should note that we have a highly successful educational site licensing scheme for APL.68000 which offers APL.68000 at very considerable discounts for bona-fide educational establishments.

At a local level, MicroAPL have just released our 1991 Training Program. We continue to specialise in intensive, one day courses either at our London offices or on a client site. We have added a new timetabled course to our schedule - ‘An Introduction to APL2’, which is aimed at users of any of the variants of APL2 (APL2/370, APL2/PC or APL.68000 Level II). Although not a part of the regular training schedule, our APL Programming Techniques course has been run several times in 1990 and seems to meet a gap in the market.

Our consultancy operations continue to cover a wide variety of applications, with a reasonably even spread between PC, Mac and multi-user environments. As we end 1990, for the first time our non-APL consultancy activities are generating as much revenue as our traditional APL work, a fact which reflects the growing quality of packaged software solutions and applications generators.

Dutch APL User Group¶

The Dutch APL User Group (DAUG for short) is happy to present itself here as a sustaining member of Vector. The DAUG exists now in Holland for about fifteen years. In those years we endeavoured to

• stimulate the use of APL
• exchange knowledge and experience about APL between members
• inform outsiders about APL
• stimulate standardisation in matters of APL
• intermediate between users and APL vendors.

The vigour in which we developed activities for each of those topics varied over the years of course. Nevertheless we organised almost every year a one-day mini-congress with several speakers. Here APL users listened to and discussed with the speakers, and the users exchanged ideas among themselves in between the talks.

Currently the DAUG is engaged in the following 2 activities: the organisation of the next mini-congress on 6 April 1991 and the project ASWI which stands for “APL ShareWare Initiative”.

MINI-CONGRESS. The next APL mini-congress is titled “Informal software/experience Exchange” and it will be held on 6 April 1991 in Nieuwegein. It will be organised with various booths in which users as well as official vendors will present some of their products. A booth can be a poster, or a demonstration, or a pile of books, or whatever a person feels comfortable to express his ideas. At the moment we have a minimum of at least the following booths: ASWI, I-APL, RNA-applications in APL68000, Menu-system in APL-2, APL68000, Dyalog APL, STSC, APL68000, APL consultancy, Public domain software. Anybody who is interested in showing his/her application is invited to contact Theo Zwart, [address and telephone number omitted].

ASWI. ASWI stands for APL ShareWare Initiative. This initiative started at the end of 1990 with the aim of developing high-quality software for APL programmers. ASWI aims to attract the attention of professional software developers to use APL and to minimise costs by offering this software on a shareware base.

Two of the most important issues which are almost resolved are: choice of basic hardware/software platform and standardisation. We have chosen IBM’s APL2 for PC’s as the primary platform and we will possibly choose APL.68000 for Mac, Atari and other 68000 micros as the second platform. Our main reasons are the free run-time version, nested arrays, and easy interchange between both platforms by )IN and )OUT. A standard is developed for documentation as well as for programming style. This standard will be submitted for publication in Vector for the next issue.

Various other topics which are still under discussion are: quality assurance, a document library, public relations/communication and many others. Most important of all will be a wish list with priorities of required software. ASWI intends to start with developing functional specifications of those wishes first and subsequently delegate them for implementation to the various interested parties.

And finally, if you are not a member of the DAUG yet, we would like to welcome you. Please write to Postbus 1341, 3430BH Nieuwegein tel.03474-2337. Currently, the board of the DAUG consists of Theo Zwart (president), Bernard Smoor (secretary), Thom Bonnema (treasurer), and Louis van Geldrop, Herman van Loon, Gerrit Teule and Eke van Batenburg.