Thanks Don for your response. I'm afraid that I haven't made my point clear. In
response to your two comments:
1.. "Wanting characters outside of standard ASCII is what plagued APL. No way
to display and hard to enter. The display is not a problem any more but entry
still is"
2.. "But it's not really difficult to intercept J input to handle say UTF-8
characters entered and convert what is displayed to UTF-8 to display special
symbols instead of the J primitives.
I am not suggesting using anything but standard ASCII. My statement was
"Required exactly the same keystrokes in the "A" mode as in the "J" mode." The
system wouldn't intercept J input - it would only intercept J output.
All I am changing is the perception of what is taking place.
1.. The system can print any shape of symbol we want on the screen - and that
symbol would be a representation not of one stored symbol, but of the two ASCII
characters keyed into and stored in the system.
2.. Marking that symbol on the keyboard beside the first ASCII character
keyed only gives the perception that that character is being entered - not the
reality.
Don Watson
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