APL on the WEB

The computer language APL includes many non "LATIN-1" symbols in its
"alphabet", making it very difficult to put into Web pages (and e-mail).
(The standard APL joke is "It's all Greek to me." only makes any sense
when you see a program written in APL.)

We (in the APL community) are looking for solutions which will allow APL
"scripts" to be sent in a web page across the internet in a simple
fashion. 

What we need to be able to do is specify that a font (containing a
"standard" APL symbol set) should be used for parts of the message. We
are working on what the standard symbol set should contain (and in what
position), but as yet, we do not known how we will convay where the APL
font should be used within a web page. (The proposed rules reguarding
how to specify "languages" within HTML expicitly exclude computer
languages.)

Currently, I do it by setting up a specific APL font for "pre-formatted"
tagged text in my web browser (Netscape 2.0) for "user defined"
document encoding, but not all web browsers support this method.

In the past I tried sending the programs as GIFs, but without OCR
readers capable of reading APL, it made "pasting" the resulting image
into APL programs a bit of a non-starter! :) (On the other hand, my
Japanese and Russian APL friends could read the programs.)

The APL community will be grateful for any suggestions or help you can
offer in this area.


Ray Cannon
Computer Consultant
E-mail ray@cannon.demon.co.uk
Compuserve 100430,740
Shining a light in the eyes of all the hedgehogs on the
Information Super Highway

Received on Saturday, 9 March 1996 17:25:19 UTC