Re: General chatter.

[Chris Moller]

    Hi, Jürgen,
    
    Thanks for the reply, though it looks like a no-go for my son--he's
    a medical physicist perfectly at home with tiny little (possible
    imaginary) particles but who hasn't even mastered "Hello, World,"
    let alone complex builds.  And I've never in my life used Windows.
    
    Not ideal, but I guess I'll have to take Mike Hall's suggestion and
    recommend Dyalog APL, or some other commercial version, to my son. 
    (Which is too bad--he deals a lot with the differing effects on
    tissues of different X-ray wavelengths and I expect ⎕FFT would have
    been very useful.)
    
    Thanks again,
    Chris

On 3/30/24 09:57, Dr. Jürgen Sauermann wrote:

Hi Chris,

some experience of mine that might help.

1. Some time ago I tried really hard to compile GNU APL with the (standard?) Microsoft C++
compiler so that GNU APL runs natively under Windows. I don't remember which compiler
(there seems to be a few of them), but I got thousands of errors and warnings, most of them
rather stupid and some of them really hard to fix while maintaining compatibility of the code
with the gcc compiler.

2. Regarding cygwin, it very much looks like you need it only to build GNU APL (since it has the
necessary development tools (autoconf, m4, ...) to do so. Once you habe produced the GNU APL
binary under cygwin you can link it with one or two of the libraries that come with cygwin. The
result of that seems to run properly in the Windows cmd.exe (don't recall which Windows version
I tried.

3. Be warned: The standard C++ development environment in Windows is quite a mess and
far more complicated than the standard GNU APL build system. Without autoconf/automake
you will need to do many changes in Makefiles and header files so that they compile. And several
GNU APL goodies (⎕FFT, ⎕PNG, ⎕XML) may not be available under Windows because the
corresponding libraries are missing.

4. I believe that NARS (https://www.nars2000.org) is a free interpreter that runs under Windows
and is, like GNU APL, free (both are licensed under the GPLv3) . Most commercial APL vendors offer
Windows based APL imterpreters which are free of charge for private use but not free because they
come with limitations as to their use.

Best Regards,
Jürgen

On 3/29/24 18:47, Chris Moller wrote:

First, due to my old ISP having apparently gone out of business while keeping my mollerware.com domain locked, my old moller@mollerware.com address is at least temporarily dead.  I'm moller@nc.rr.com for the moment.

Second, is there a Windows version of APL that runs without using Cygwin?  My son has need of it--he's stuck in a benighted environment that refuses to acknowledge the existence of Linux.

Thanks,
Chris

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