APL

From OLPC
Revision as of 04:21, 16 August 2006 by Mokurai (talk | contribs) (APL characters and Unicode blocks)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

APL is a programming language with its own special character set combining Greek letters, math symbols, and more. Its characters do not have a Unicode block of their own, but are scattered widely. Here are the APL characters included in Unicode, with their Unicode block names.

A-Z, 0-9, !?()[]',.:/\-_ (ASCII)
¨¯ (Latin-1)
αειρω (Greek)
←↑→↓ (Arrows)
+<=>×÷∆∇∗∘∣∧∨∩∪∼⊂⊃⊢⊣⊤⊥ (Math)
⌶⌷⌸⌹⌺⌻⌼⌽⌾⌿⍀⍁⍂⍃⍄⍅⍆⍈⍉⍊⍋⍌⍎⍏⍐⍑⍒⍓⍔⍕⍖⍗ (Miscellaneous Technical Symbols)
⍘⍙⍚⍛⍜⍝⍞⍟⍠⍡⍢⍣⍤⍥⍦⍧⍨⍩⍪⍫⍬⍭⍮⍯⍰⍱⍲⍶⍷⍸⍹ (Miscellaneous Technical Symbols)
◇ (Block Elements & Geometric Shapes)

A number of APL characters were originally produced by overstriking characters from the base set (originally 88 characters on Selectric typeballs, later extended to 95 in the APL-ASCII overlay mappings). In later APL software, there is support for typing the previously overstruck characters as single characters, typically using the Control or Alt key as a modifier. All APL symbols are included in Unicode, but not in a single block.

The A+ dialect of APL is available in most Linux distributions. It includes its own APL font.

There is no complete standard APL keyboard. Most vendors use either the typewriter-paired or bit-paired overlay layout for the basic symbols, but there is no agreement whatever on the locations of any composite symbols that are provided without overstriking.

APL is a highly mathematical language, which gives it limited appeal in spite of its power. It has been applied to almost everything in computing except writing device drivers.