Auwvax.310 net.lang.apl utzoo!decvax!harpo!uwvax!greg Wed Apr 7 16:00:30 1982 APL expressions over the net I definitely agree with rabbit!ark on the matter of how to write APL expressions in net.lang.apl. There are two cases to be considered: 1) APL expressions primarily intended for human consumption; 2) LONG apl functions and/or variables and/or workspaces which should be transmitted over the net in machine-readable form. First the first category: When I'm on the receiving end I prefer (by a country mile) pigeon-English APL; I find it distracting and annoying to have to translate from .ro .so or @R @A to something meaningful to me. On the other hand, FOO := ( FOO noteq ' ')/ iota rho FOO doesn't require an extra level of translation before I start to figure out what the expression is really doing. On the sending end I have a slight preference for @R @I, etc., since my fingers know where all the APL symbols are on a regular apl terminal. On balance I think that for human-human communication pigeon is the best. I think that upper case for variables, ascii when it is the same, and lower case for unique apl symbols is the most understandable. For the really funny apl symbols, maybe the official IBM word or words would be best: 2 4 3 1 2 slopecircle (5 rho 2)rho iota 32 'slopecircle' really isn't funny enough - 'transpose' should probably be used in its place in the above example. I'm thinking of things like the various shoes, lamp, etc. Of course, all of this is a matter of personal preference, rather than an attempt to impose a network standard, which I don't think we should do for the human-human communication. Second the second category: For machine to machine communication (apl that is meant to be used rather than understood), an arcane @ or .xx notation would probably be best, and an effort at standardization is probably in order. - Greg J. U Wis - Madison ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.