It rather depends on *how* you are looking at the piece of APL code in question.
Is it APL text that has been converted to unicode and displayed in a browser? I'd guess not, because you say you have no difficulty displaying APL characters in general …so I suppose http://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/User:Ian_Clark/APLChars shows true. Or are you using an (older) APL intepreter to display APL code which it manages itself? E.g. to extract an original workspace listing in order to typeset it to modern standards? Or perhaps you're working on a session log dumped from an older APL interpreter – which of course needs a special pre-unicode font in the vendor's quadAV layout to display the original characters. If the last, then the display can be disrupted when the platform itself happens to be reserving sub- or superascii bytes for some special use, like escape characters, or one of the older methods of displaying accented latin text. I'm not familiar with emacs, but I gather it's a blast from the past, and so might be prone to this sort of thing. So it's not enough to get hold of the vendor's original font. When the byte codes are filtered through alien platforms, strange things can happen. Such as characters vanishing without trace. When I used to help typeset APL code from a wide variety of sources for publication in VECTOR, I was frequently amazed at the unhappy choices of quadAV layout in various vendors' interpreters. Certain characters interacted badly with some well-known browsers and word processors, like M$Word 2004 (which put some superasciis to undocumented uses). This could kill a small number of APL characters stone-dead – often just one – all too easily missed until the copy went to press. I note in passing that in your article: http://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/User:Devon_McCormick/DynamicLinearModels/BayesianFinancialDynamicLinearModel the APL chars are broken. And the way they're broken is revealing. I'd guess it's originally Dyalog Win v11 or earlier. I get a similar-looking corrupt listing when I copy/paste APL from old articles and manuals in PDF form into OS X TextEdit. I could fix the article in question, if I dig out 10 year-old archived material and remind myself how to use it. It's the sort of thing I once did a lot of. On Tue, May 23, 2017 at 5:07 PM, Devon McCormick <[email protected]> wrote: > My PC is quite new and has no problem displaying APL characters in > general. It's just that when I look at a piece of APL code I have in an > emacs session, everything but the lamp shows up correctly for a number of > fonts. > > On Tue, May 23, 2017 at 10:48 AM, Ian Clark <[email protected]> wrote: > > > David is right. Adrian Smith's APL385, based on Comic Sans, used to be > the > > reference standard for cross-platform APLs using TrueType fonts. Most > > up-to-date monospaced fonts should have Lamp: '⍝' --e.g. AndaleMono > (what I > > use on my iMac), Courier, FreeMono or Monaco. > > > > If you're running an antique computer, like I am, be warned that fonts > with > > the same names on Win and OS X often used to have different subsets of > the > > utf-8 range, but I'm talking 5-10 years ago now. Worth downloading the > > latest version of these fonts, since I found once that a long series of > OS > > X upgrades had not replaced my existing fonts -- at least, not all of > them. > > > > All the usual APL chars (I say "usual" because historically any > overstruck > > is a valid APL character) are in: U+2300-23FF (Miscellaneous technical). > > Lamp is U+235d (9053). > > > > What I'd do to verify the APL display capability of any computer platform > > is to go to http://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/User:Ian_Clark/APLChars > > …which shows the character table (⎕AV) of Dyalog APL version 12 in utf-8 > > plus a screen snapshot of what it ought to look like. > > It's then a question of finding which font your browser is using, or > > varying the font until the page shows true. > > > > > > On Tue, May 23, 2017 at 10:30 AM, David Mitchell <[email protected]> > > wrote: > > > > > I do not know if it works with emacs, but > http://www.dyalog.com/apl-font > > > -keyboard.htm apl385 font has lamp: > > > > > > ⍝ > > > > > > > > > > > > On 5/23/2017 05:06, Devon McCormick wrote: > > > > > >> Not a J question but someone here might know what font I can use to > get > > >> all > > >> the APL characters in emacs (on Windows). > > >> I can get almost all of them with many fonts, except for the "lamp" > > >> (comment) symbol. > > >> > > >> ------------------------------------------------------------ > ---------- > > > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > > > > > > -- > > Devon McCormick, CFA > > Quantitative Consultant > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
