> [1991] IAPL/Mac, an ultra-portable APL interpreter written by Paul Chapman, released
No, the name of the portable interpreter was I-APL. IAPL/Mac was just one of many ports, to a wide range of platforms. For a list of ports which existed in any given year, indeed for the current version of every APL interpreter known to the British APL Association, see the APL Product Guide, published in every issue of Vector from its inception in May 1984. This valuable reference was only discontinued in 2008. The I-APL project was founded by a committee consisting of Ed Cherlin, Anthony Camacho, Norman Thomson, Howard Peelle and Dave Ziemann. The committee raised donations to commission Paul Chapman to produce I-APL. All ports were to be released as freeware for educational use. Prior to that, I believe there was no APL interpreter that cost less than $450, which limited its use in schools. Correction: killed APL as far as schools were concerned and ensured nobody entered their first job knowing how to use it. In marked contrast virtually everyone leaving school (in the UK) had written simple programs in BASIC. I-APL's enduring legacy was to encourage major vendors to release low-cost or free educational versions of their interpreters: generally a back-release. I-APL fitted into 32K (sic!) but needed a "p-code machine" to run the implementation language: DE. The task of a "porter" was to write the DE interpreter for the machine of his or her choice. Simple enough -- if you knew the platform intimately and could code in ASM. Paul finished I-APL and released it to volunteer porters (including myself) in 1987. The first port was to the IBM PC, released in January 1988. Effectively it was "open source", though the concept is a recent one. But of course free open source software was IBM policy prior to 1969, when the US govt forced it to charge for software by a consent decree -- thereby creating the multi-trillion dollar software industry overnight. I have a copy of the IAPL/Mac User Guide, dated 15/2/91. I recall the Mac port was released before then, but lacking evidence I must accept that date for its release. Chapter 1 is "History and Aims of the I-APL Project" -- such an interesting document in itself that I ought to upload it to the J wiki. In fact I propose that every item on Devon's list gets a link to a supporting page on the J wiki. Or, more ambitiously: Wikipedia. On Sun, Nov 24, 2013 at 6:49 PM, Devon McCormick <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi - > > I've put up a preliminary draft of the APL chronology I've assembled with > the help of many on this forum: > http://www.sigapl.org/APLChronology.php > .<http://www.sigapl.org/APLChronology.php> > > Anyone who's interested should please take a look and feel free to point > out any errors or omissions. Also, any suggestions for presenting the > information more elegantly are also welcome. > > Thanks, > > Devon > -- > Devon McCormick, CFA > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
