Chapter 19 WHERE TO GET J Iverson Software Inc watserv anonymous ftp *======================================== # IVERSON SOFTWARE INC. 33 Major Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2K9 Phone (416)925-6096 Fax (416)488-7559 ISI NEWS April 1992 GENERAL We are pleased at the response to our series of ads in Computer Language and in Dr Dobb's Journal, and will start advertising in Byte in July. We will also be advertising in local Toronto publications in anticipation of the APL93 conference, scheduled for Toronto. Larger print runs and other factors have allowed us to significantly reduce prices -- apologies to our early customers. 50% discounts are available to dealers, and to anyone ordering in quantity. J is alive and well in Britain: the articles in the January issue of Vector sparked considerable interest, and Paul Chapman's port of J to the Archimedes (widely used in schools) has led to a recent J workshop in London, organized by Anthony Camacho of I-APL and conducted by Dr. McIntyre. We believe that hands-on workshops are an ideal way to approach J, and hope to encourage further activities of this sort. J The development of J continues and we are now shipping version 4.1. An important addition is J for the PC386 systen, which includes a DOS extender that provides a large workspace and unlimited object size in extended and virtual memory. Another major development is the availability of the source code for the J system, together with full documentation in A Implementation of J. This development includes and supersedes LinkJ, which has therefore been discontinued. We will continue to port the latest versions of J to the more popular machines, but expect that others will exploit the availability of the source code to port J to a wider range of machines. A number of such ports have already been made. We believe that An lmplementation of J, together with the dictionary, provides a basis for an interesting computer science course in the implementation of a functional programming language. The system kit for J now includes the new An lntroduction to J instead of Tangible Math, which is now available separately. As stated in the introduction, "This book is designed to introduce J in a manner that makes it easily accessible to programmers, by emphasizing those aspects that distinguish it from other languages". J is ideal for teaching and experimenting with topics in mathematics and programming. It is a new dialect of APL, but requires no special characters. Printed documentation is copyrighted, but J systems are shareware that may be used and copied freely. J is available on many machines, including: PC, PC386, 386IX, SUN SPARC, MACINTOSH, ARCHIMEDES. Inquire about ports to further machines. SYSTEM KIT - $24 - A system diskette plus An lntroduction to J and the ISI Dictionary of J. ISI DICTI0NARY 0F J - $12 - A complete manual plus 50 brief tutorials that use J in a variety of topics (34pp). AN lNTR0DUCTION T0 J -$12- Introduces J in a manner that makes it accessible to programmers, emphasizing those aspects that distinguish it from other programming languages (44pp). PR0GRAMMING IN J - $15 - A general introduction to programming as well as an introduction to programming in J (77pp). TANGIBLE MATH -$12- Uses the executable J notation to treat topics from elementary and high school math in a manner that introduces the use of vectors, matrices, and other concepts essential in college and more advanced mathematics (34pp). ARITHMETIC-$18 -From the preface: "The thrust of the book might best be appreciated by comparing it with Felix Klein's Elementary Mathematics from an Advanced Standpoint. However, I shun the corresponding title Arithmetic from an Advanced Standpoint because it would incorrectly suggest that the treatment is intended only for mature mathematicians; on the contrary, the use of simple, consistent, executable notation makes it accessible to any serious student possessing little more than a knowledge of the counting numbers" (122 pp). J S0URCE C0DE - $90 - A diskette of J source (in C), accompanied by full documentation in An Implementation of J (100pp). *======================================== # J5 now at APL Archives at Waterloo +------------------ | Leroy J. (Lee) Dickey | 1992-06-20 Flash: recent addition: J5 =========================================================================== APL, J, and other APL Software at Waterloo Several versions of APL and J are now available on the file server known variously as watserv1.uwaterloo.ca watserv1.waterloo.edu 129.97.129.140 at the University of Waterloo. In the directory "languages/apl", anonymous ftp users will find a lot of good stuff. An index showing all APL files is available as "languages/apl/index". The source for J, Version 5, and corresponding executables for dec5500, mips, next, sgi, sun3, sun4, and vax machines are available. Some earlier versions of J are available for Atari ST, Mac, IBM PC, ATT 3b1, Amiga, PC OS/2, Archimedes, HP, and IBM RS6000. Several flavors of APL are available, including Sharp APL, I-APL, RATAPL, and TryAPL2. Several different APL fonts may be obtained: (1) APL2741, a postscript line font (2) An X-Windows font (3) Two different TeX fonts. There are some APL workspaces, such as the Toronto Toolkit, a complex numbers workspace, an accounting package, and one on workspace interchange that has the feature that the exchange files are human readable. There are some back articles from the news group "comp.lang.apl", (not the most recent ones) and a file called FAQ which answers Frequently Asked Questions about APL and newsgroup related subjects. Currently, this service is being provided on an experimental basis, and there are no promises that it will continue on a long term basis, nor is there any warantee of serviceability or completeness of the software distributed from watserv1. The rest of this announcement is of interest to readers who are not on internet. It is hoped that eventually there will be a mail server on watserv1 for this same range of software to those who have e-mail access but no ftp access, but so far this has not happened. In the meantime, users who do not have ftp but who do have e-mail may find one of the services BITFTP@PUCC.BITNET ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com to be useful. The first is of use only to users who have access to BITNET, and the second will be of use to users who have e-mail but no access to BITNET, such as unix users on Usenet or users on of certain commercial services. To get started with BITFTP@PUCC.BITNET, send a one word message "help" to BITFTP@PUCC.BITNET. Or, simply follow this example: of this mail message (with no leading blanks) To: BITFTP@PUCC.BITNET FTP watserv1.uwaterloo.ca UUENCODE USER anonymous CD languages/apl BINARY GET index QUIT which was successful in acquiring the index. Similar messages could result in receiving the various pieces of software. Once you have the index, you may see the name of some other file you want. For such a file, determine the directory path (``dp'') and the file name (``fn''). One example you will have already done: the file "languages/apl/index" splits up as: dp languages/apl fn index As another example, if the file languages/apl/j/What_is_J is of interest to you, you would use this combination of directory path and the file name: dp languages/apl fn What_is_J Prepare a little file that will become your mail message to pucc: (As before, no lines of the file have no leading blanks.) To: bitftp@pucc.bitnet FTP watserv1.uwaterloo.ca UUENCODE USER anonymous CD dp BINARY GET fn QUIT Of course, in the above, you replace "dp" by the appropriate directory path, and you replace "fn" by the file name. Use your local e-mail to send the file off. If all goes as intended, when PUCC gets your mail message, it does the "ftp" session for you, using the commands you have supplied. It wraps the file up in a "uuencode" package, and mails it to you. When you get the file, you may have to combine several files together, remove superfluous blank and mail header lines, and uudecode the file. We understand that at this time, PUCC provides this service only to users at BITNET sites. However, e-mail users at other sites may be helped by a service provided by ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com . To get started send a one word message with just the word "help" in the body of the message. Use no leading blanks, and use no quotation marks. You should get back instructions that will get you started. The body of your first message might be something like this: connect watserv1.uwaterloo.ca chdir languages/apl get index quit The service offered by ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com is scheduled to give priority to first-class mail, so you may find yourself waiting a day or so for what you want.