[HN Gopher] "Learn APL" Notes
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       "Learn APL" Notes
        
       Author : todsacerdoti
       Score  : 19 points
       Date   : 2025-10-25 20:34 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (luksamuk.codes)
 (TXT) w3m dump (luksamuk.codes)
        
       | smartmic wrote:
       | I worked with GNU APL for a while and really liked it. It's also
       | possible to extend it with the C foreign function interface
       | (FFI). The best way I found to input the APL2 symbols with my
       | normal keyboard was with a customized XCompose definition where
       | the input chords are mnemonics of the actual symbols:
       | https://gist.github.com/smartmic/cdb8b0b3936ab965213748813b6...
        
         | bear8642 wrote:
         | huh, can you not use the Xkb APL symbols file?
         | 
         | I thought that compose definitions as well as the shifted
         | layout...
        
         | turtleyacht wrote:
         | Thank-you. Any thoughts on the layout below versus the others
         | listed?
         | 
         | https://www.pckeyboard.com/page/product/USAPLSET
         | 
         | I've got some notes on setting up input on OpenBSD as well. It
         | enables Left Ctrl and Left Alt for APL symbols, but also a
         | Unicode escape hatch with Right Alt and Caps Lock:
         | https://github.com/turtleyacht/ap-el-kb.github.io
        
       | mmooss wrote:
       | APL was developed in the 1960s. Between then and whenever its
       | symbols were added to Unicode (U+2336 and following, at least),
       | how were its symbols encoded?
        
         | dzaima wrote:
         | Custom encodings, as was standard (or, well, mandatory) before
         | Unicode (1991). Hell, Dyalog APL to this day supports its
         | classic 1-byte encoding (not even ASCII-compatible!) in
         | addition to Unicode.
         | 
         | Looks like the APL chars were added in Uncicode 1.1 (1993), two
         | years after 1.0, which is quick enough.
        
         | 7thaccount wrote:
         | Early on, the selectric typewriter thing had a spherical ball
         | that could rotate to stamp the characters. So when you typed a
         | key the IBM hardware would type a character on a piece of paper
         | exactly like a typewriter and also the IBM computer would keep
         | track of this and when you ran the expression it would
         | calculate the result and print that out as well. You can see
         | videos of this.
        
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       (page generated 2025-10-25 23:00 UTC)