Hacker News Reader

Comment by TimTheTinker | Hacker News Reader

I once got talking with an anesthesiologist who was taking care of a family member. Upon hearing I was a developer, he told me he was an APL programmer who spent most of his computer time developing Bible software. He regaled me with a few APL war stories, about how he could get so much more done with so much less code...

I was intrigued, and still am. But one thing I didn't catch -- how do you write all those non-ASCII symbols using a standard OS and text editor? Or does it require special tools?

View on HN

Edit: btw, https://tryapl.org «`» is prefix key. `i10 ⟶ ⍳10

> how do you write all those non-ASCII symbols using a standard OS and text editor?

Modifier+KEY or PrefixKey KEY

All symbols are in Unicode. No special tools required.

        ]KEYB
  US Keyboard Layout:

  ╔════╦════╦════╦════╦════╦════╦════╦════╦════╦════╦════╦════╦════╦═════════╗
  ║ ~  ║ !⌶ ║ @⍫ ║ #⍒ ║ $⍋ ║ %⌽ ║ ^⍉ ║ &⊖ ║ *⍟ ║ (⍱ ║ )⍲ ║ _! ║ +⌹ ║         ║
  ║ `◊ ║ 1¨ ║ 2¯ ║ 3< ║ 4≤ ║ 5= ║ 6≥ ║ 7> ║ 8≠ ║ 9∨ ║ 0∧ ║ -× ║ =÷ ║ BACKSP  ║
  ╠════╩══╦═╩══╦═╩══╦═╩══╦═╩══╦═╩══╦═╩══╦═╩══╦═╩══╦═╩══╦═╩══╦═╩══╦═╩══╦══════╣
  ║       ║ Q  ║ W⍹ ║ E⋸ ║ R  ║ T⍨ ║ Y¥ ║ U  ║ I⍸ ║ O⍥ ║ P⍣ ║ {⍞ ║ }⍬ ║  |⊣  ║
  ║  TAB  ║ q? ║ w⍵ ║ e∈ ║ r⍴ ║ t∼ ║ y↑ ║ u↓ ║ i⍳ ║ o○ ║ p⋆ ║ [← ║ ]→ ║  \⊢  ║
  ╠═══════╩═╦══╩═╦══╩═╦══╩═╦══╩═╦══╩═╦══╩═╦══╩═╦══╩═╦══╩═╦══╩═╦══╩═╦══╩══════╣
  ║ (CAPS   ║ A⍶ ║ S  ║ D  ║ F  ║ G  ║ H  ║ J⍤ ║ K  ║ L⌷ ║ :≡ ║ "≢ ║         ║
  ║  LOCK)  ║ a⍺ ║ s⌈ ║ d⌊ ║ f_ ║ g∇ ║ h∆ ║ j∘ ║ k' ║ l⎕ ║ ;⍎ ║ '⍕ ║ RETURN  ║
  ╠═════════╩═══╦╩═══╦╩═══╦╩═══╦╩═══╦╩═══╦╩═══╦╩═══╦╩═══╦╩═══╦╩═══╦╩═════════╣
  ║             ║ Z  ║ Xχ ║ C¢ ║ V  ║ B£ ║ N  ║ M  ║ <⍪ ║ >⍙ ║ ?⍠ ║          ║
  ║  SHIFT      ║ z⊂ ║ x⊃ ║ c∩ ║ v∪ ║ b⊥ ║ n⊤ ║ m| ║ ,⍝ ║ .⍀ ║ /⌿ ║  SHIFT   ║
  ╚═════════════╩════╩════╩════╩════╩════╩════╩════╩════╩════╩════╩══════════╝

Unfortunately, HN's markdown (or maybe my Firefox's rendering of it) is messing up your beautiful ASCII graphic. I copy/pasted it in my editor and it looks fine. Thank you for taking the trouble to post this.

It works just fine for me with Firefox. You may want to check the monospaced font in preferences (General tab -> Language and Appearance). HN just uses the default monospaced font, and swapping through my fonts I found a decent number of fonts that did not render it correctly.

You'll need to click OK to dismiss the settings popup to apply the change, but the page doesn't have to be reloaded.

You may also want to un-check the "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above" box, my experience is that just using a fixed sans + serif font (GNU Freefont for me, though Apple's San Francisco is also good for sans) makes many websites look better, makes very few websites look worse, and makes everything look consistent.

I'm reminded that it's possible to be quietly weird and brilliant, in the world that moves on in ignorance of the latest JavaScript shit, kubernetes shit, database shit, ... Thanks for sharing!

Wouldn't Bible software be mostly concerned about strings and/or UI? Putting scripture into arrays and matrices sounds a bit... TempleOS-ish.

APL (or at least J) actually works quite well for string processing.

Most of the vendors (Ex: Dyalog) sell keyboards with the markings on them. It isn't necessary though as you'll actually pick them up decently fast. There is so much less typing that you can also just pick them out of the IDE's toolbar kind of like you do on the tryapl.org website.

I'm wondering what about APL made it a good choice for "Bible software", or in fact what such software even does, other than searching?

He said he did a lot of data extraction, processing, and exporting. Sort of an ETL process that pulls stuff together from different sources and exports to different formats (I think).

For each verse in the Bible there's a ton of different types of data that can be pulled together and provided in a UI - stuff like translator notes, Strong numbers and lexical parsing of source words (i.e. part of speech, tense, voice, person, declension, mood), lexicon for each word, cross-references, ... and that's just at the translation level. Bible software also usually provides multiple translations, pre-built search indexes, commentaries, study notes, theological texts, and collected sermons and books by historical luminaries.

What's Bible software?

Software to assist people with Bible study. It does things like search, cross referencing, showing different translations in parallel, annotations, study notes, suggesting passages with similar themes etc.

I'd like software like that for reading classic literature. It often has many translations, study notes, commentaries, are available in multiple languages, etc. etc.

If it were easy to do, you could use it to learn new languages, by reading in multiple languages simultaniously.

You use a font that has those symbols and then Alt key combinations to make the characters.

Wow... How about on a Mac? Option and Shift-option keystrokes?

Yes. I have the free but non open source APLX running on my iMac and have the image of the keyboard map they supply loaded in Preview.

Many of them are mnemonic, such as iota being (key)-I for example.

Free because the APLX vendor eventually decided to focus on their legacy software business and get out of selling an APL interpreter. I think they essentially needed a rewrite or just a lot of work on the product and couldn't justify it. Dyalog agreed to host the old and unsupported APLX interpreter on their site if anyone wants it.

Haha this brings back memories. In college days, this was our way to hide files. We'd name the files with these symbols, and so you had to know that key combination to open the files. Note that this was pre internet era and DOS prompt, no windows so you couldn't just click on the file.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com