Review of I-APL for the Macintosh

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 23

John: (Our Doubting Thomas)...It’s slow like the Master...

Muiry: (with the spec’s)........................and my P.C.

John: and uses 32k WS size. The WS’s are too high-fallutin’ for me and I’ve a better collection of idioms already!

Jason: (Our American with the economist Galbraith American/Canadian accent) But John! If these limitations are irksome, the APL people intend you to use a “proper” APL like our APL 68000 (or one for my PC, butted in Muiry)...Besides, the notation is concise and allows lots of functions. See our Battlegame on the BBC.

Muiry: It’s dearer but cheap by comparison; I like the photocopied manual. And it does support Direct Definitions!

John: Yes. I’m glad of that. I’d like to know more about the Editor window. I’m quite happy with the Del editor; I can still re-input lines there. I’m fast with that.

Teacher: Line numbers are omitted. Cut and paste are possible. Get back via “finish editing”. Direct definitions are seen in the usual way...type and return.

Muiry: Do we have the equivalent of the VDU commands to build a graphics package? I saw Struan trying something with the clipboard.

Teacher: The graphics package has circles, rectangles (empty or pattern-filled), USA map or world map. With the machine code calls at the end of the book, we can use direct definitions to position rectangles, sense mouse co-ordinates. Just imagine what we can do with that! (Long pause).

John: It has a VOICE demo! How to do it looks difficult to me!

Muiry: The Session Log allows me to double-click previous items to re-input them. And we can move the cursor up and down with the arrow keys.

Teacher: Too much use of the session log seems to crash it. Better to clear rubbish now and again.

Struan: (in best bed-side manner) The Clear Window looks useful there. No bother printing on the Laser Printer. Very Macintoshy with menus, dialogues, Load, Save, Save As. No Undo as I saw somewhere.

Teacher: (QXPress?) “Save workspace?” on Quit....type a colon or something...it thinks you’ve changed the WS. The H.P. DeskWriter is OK so it’s likely OK with an Imagewriter.

John: Except how to print a graphics window. That looks difficult to me! 73 chars per line and a warning.

Teacher: The BBC WS’s are compatible (except graphics) and can be transferred to the Mac and laundered (given an icon) with the Exchange program down in the Maths dept. where they have a Mac and BBC side by side.

Muiry: I like the Nails, Rounds etc. for finding symbols.

Jason: But Muiry! Have you not learned your mnemonics yet! And you with a PC too. And did you see the customisable menu: Control. That should be a convenience for newcomers.

Struan: A real give-away! Like it better than Comal, but some will say “horses for courses”, that a Mac application would be better in some other language.

Jason: Well, I’m amazed at how powerful it is. We can do things with it that would be difficult for a £300 database!

Struan: Yes, the Text window is like a wordprocessor; no word wrapping, needs CR, but both upper and lower case with Ctrl K or switch back to APL style with Ctrl K.

Muiry: I’m not worried about System 7! but will it wear?

John: Ah! But what about WINDOWS!

Jason: Nothing that the author couldn’t fix! If someone paid him for about 3 man-months of work! Really, our Basic friends just don’t know what they are missing. Imagine a future priest like me doing APL on the side!