I stumbled upon Iverson's concise depiction in APL
of the simplex algorithm for linear programing and
that got me wondering if there is such a thing in K.
Or J but I don't grok J too well as yet. Further,
if anyone has an interior points method solution in
APL, K or J. If so, I'd very much like to see
these solutions. I don't need them for any real
work (for that I'd just use lp_solve or something);
I am just curious. Thanks!

I used to have a few ARIMA models written in APL from two of the papers
that have appeared on this subject -- but no longer have the
workspaces.

Does anyone have an ARIMA workspace or paper such as the following
that contains an ARIMA model written in APL -- or the other by Frank
Ripley.

"Analysing time-series in APL
by Alan M. Sykes

This paper considers the provision of time-series software.
Specifically it discusses some appropriate graphical output,
and the fitting of ARIMA models using a version of Marquardt's
Non-Linear Least Squares algorithm."

Well, I guess I am going to have to wait for the Optimus keyboard -
this will solve all our problems :)

http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus

Early adopters are looking at $1200 a pop though - you have to be
seriously into your APL.

In the meantime I may try and create my own keyboard from a
relegendable POS keyboard. Although getting my own keycap set created
is an option, it doesn't look like doing this in bulk is going to help
many other people, given the diversity of APL symbol placement on
standard keyboards.

Regards,

Mark

jk wrote:

"Polivka@acm.org" wrote:

Archive-name: apl-faq
Posting-Frequency: monthly
Last-modified: Mon Dec 4 17:50:44 PST 2006

APL Frequently Asked Questions (well some, anyway)
Maintained by S.W. Sirlin
Thanks to the many people who have contributed to this list.

11/27/2006 New in this version: an available book list at bestwebbuys.

First, what is APL?
APL is the first array processing language (that I know of anyway).
The following was extracted from http://www.acm.org/sigapl/whyapl.htm.

The language was invented by Kenneth E. Iverson while at Harvard
University. The language, originally titled "Iverson Notation", was
designed to overcome the inherent ambiguities and points of confusion
found when dealing with standard mathematical notation. It was later
described in 1962 in a book simply titled "A Programming Language"
(hence APL). Towards the end of the sixties, largely through the
efforts of IBM, the computer community gained its first exposure to
APL. Iverson received the Turing Award in 1980 for this work.

Mark,

Much as I would love to see reasonably priced APL keyboards or keycaps
available, I'm afraid I have some discouraging comments.

I know of at least 13 commonly used APL keyboard layouts. (That's how many
we ship in the keyboard handler in Workstation APL2.) There are a half a
dozen for IBM, and several for each of Dyalog and APL2000. Plus, I know of
more than a few customers who have designed their own layouts. And that's
only in English. When you add in the dozen national languages commonly used
with APL, you find you need to supply a huge number of layouts to support a
significant percentage of the APL users world wide.

Then, as other readers have mentioned, there is the question of which
physical keyboards you're going to support. There are lots of them, and
most of them would require different keycaps.

Finally, I suspect that the situation is going to get even more complicated
as custom keyboard keyboard layouts become more common. Microsoft offers a
tool for designing your own layouts and I think this will get more and more
popular. (It can be found by googling for "Microsoft Keyboard Layout
Creator".)

The keycaps would be for a specific make of keyboard, probably Cherry
at this time. I would envisage that you could purchase either the
keycaps or a complete keyboard. I'm sure a penguin key wouldn't be a
problem either, but initially the keycaps would only be for UK/US
keyboard layouts (although see my next reply)

As far as IBM 3270 is concerned, are the APL keys in the Union layout?
Or the APL/2 layout? What vendors of APL would you expect such a
keyboard layout to support?

Regards,

Mark.

Ibeam2000 wrote:

I think it likely that initially the only keycaps would be for a US/UK
keyboard. However, I have toyed with the idea that APL-only keycaps
might be a more universal option, ie, keycaps without any standard
ASCII characters - if you are programming in APL then chances are
you've mastered the standard keyboard layout.

Regards,

Mark.

If you were to do this, I think that a copy of the IBM 3270 keyboard
would work pretty well.

However, when you say "keycaps", what physical keyboard are they meant
to be used with? Microsoft? Cherry? All keytops are
manufacturer-specific. Also, I could use several US keyboards and
several Swiss German ones, and they should work with the Microsoft
Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000, which looks a little like a BMW
radiator grille. On my keyboard, the 6, 7, t, y, g, h, b and n keys
are slightly wider as there is essentially a separate pad for each
hand.

I would imagine there are at least 10 different locales you will want
to support, from the French AZERTY keyboard, the US and UK English
differ slightly, German, Scandinavian, and Ken only knows what else.
That is, ASCII characters.

I use this so-called ergonomic keyboard in the hope of avoiding carpal
tunnel surgery, however most people hate it.

anyone?

with support for Yi syllabics

I need to be able to run it on my Kazakh version
of XP 95.1 for Workgroups