Aha, of course just *after* posting to the list, I managed to find this search page with idioms selectable by APL dialect -- tucked away within Dyalog's 'miserver' demonstration site. It allows one to see idioms for various dialects of APL (Finn, APL2, Dyalog).
Not quite 'how to do X with vs. without forks/trains', but still quite useful. It seems a tenuous place to publish such a useful resource, within a sample site that may disappear. I hope it doesn't go away... https://miserver.dyalog.com/Examples/Applications/Idiom_Search.mipage -Russ On Wed, 24 Feb 2021 at 12:30, Russtopia <[email protected]> wrote: > What is the general consensus among GNU APL users here on the newer 'tacit > style' that seems so prevalent in many online APL resources nowadays? > ('forks', 'trains', etc.) > > As a new, inexperienced APLer, exploring a bit more with GNU APL, I wonder > if it discourages people new to APL to find, as I have, that so many > resources online appear to be quite Dyalog-focused so the examples do not > work as presented within GNU APL. > > I am aware that GNU APL is an 'APL2' implementation for the most part, > which is fine by itself and I think it is important to have this > open-source, free implementation. However it concerns me somewhat that > newcomers to GNU APL may be discouraged to find so many examples online > that are incompatible. > > Perhaps if I were myself experienced enough, I would write a GNU APL > equivalent to the 'APL cart' (aplcart.info) with a focus on translating > common idioms from 'tacit style' to APL2 style. (Indeed, perhaps such > resources exist and I apologize if I have merely not encountered them yet. > I have yet to study in-depth the older 'Finn APL idiom library' and > similar). > > As for adding tacit style to GNU APL, I do not advocate one way or the > other, as I do not have sufficient experience for an informed opinion. How > much value would the 'tacit' syntax bring to GNU APL? Would it even be > possible to add without breaking APL2 conformance? > > I also see a lot of usage online of 'guards' within lambdas which GNU APL > seems to lack -- would the language benefit from adding support for that or > would many of you say it is just 'syntactic sugar'? > > Just some thoughts from an APL newcomer. I enjoy it, and am grateful to > Dr. Sauermann et al. for their hard work. > > -Russ > >
