The conciseness of J as well as the compactness of the J interpreter, makes
it particularly suited for use on a modern smartphone. Android-OS-based
phones are the most popular phones on the planet.
*Mobile Operating System* Market Share Worldwide - June 2019
Android 76.03%
iOS 22.04%
KaiOS 0.79%

It would potentially be worthwhile to build a robust J language environment
on the Android OS, which could be placed on the Google Play Store. The
Google Play Store is on billions of phones all over the world, and would
give visibility of J to a much wider audience. Also, one should not
underestimate the power of a "one-click" install, for a free app that
promises the power that J has.

I would envision a J application on Android which would follow as closely
as possible  a two-window paradigm on Windows (one window for the Qt IDE,
and one window for the editor). The Android UI should provide a vertical
split-screen, showing the execution window on top and the editor window
below, with an adjustable boundary between them. A single click should pop
either window to full screen, or back to a split. This scheme will need to
have a custom pop-up J keyboard auto-installed (draggable pop-up), with
substitute mechanisms for cntrl-R (copying editor verbs into the execution
window) as well as other J control functions.

I believe this approach could have a significant impact on getting
non-programmers to use J as an everyday calculator substitute, providing
much more powerful functions, with automatic execution & result history in
the interactive execution window. J libraries like stats or finance could
be presented as J addons in the Play Store, with an overview for each
library addon in the store. Once the app is in the store, J users can
install it with a click, and then give glowing (hopefully) comments on the
app, which will raise it's ratings in the store.

For that matter, you might even want to charge for the interpreter, or
maybe for just charge for the library addons (remember the razor & blades
scheme?). In many cases, charging a modest amount for an app raises it's
perceived value, even before the purchase. I built an app for the iPhone,
(Tune Transformer), charged a pop fee it, and have received a steady income
each year, though it has tapered off recently. I have been tempted to port
the app to Android, but I'm not a system programmer. I contracted out my
signal processing math and UI design to an iPhone app developer group, so
they ported the signal processing code and implemented my UI design so I
could put it on the Apple store.

Promoting the app on the Google Play Store using a promo video showing the
amazing power of J, could bring a whole new set of J users to the language.

Skip

Skip Cave
Cave Consulting LLC


On Fri, Jul 26, 2019 at 12:21 AM Linda Alvord <[email protected]>
wrote:

> It would be great to have J as an app in an app store.
>
> What route would you offer as the easiest route for getting J installed as
> easily as possible on a phone or table?
> Linda
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone
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