> [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
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