Re: A question to the APL vendors on Windows GUIs ...

On Jan 15, 5:39=A0am, Ibeam2000 <Ibeam2...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> ... =A0Today, some 16 years later, the
> low-level details are much the same, while lots of software, possibly
> of disinterest to the APLer, have emerged, such as Visual Studio,
> Eclipse, Swing, and so on. =A0These aid in the initial composition of
> the interfaces, but integrating APL computation in these is not
> trivial.

Actually, it IS pretty easy, Visual Studio allows you to build
projects
which consist of bits of Dyalog (in script form) which you call from
your C# application. But VS just isn't an environment which is
condusive
to the kind of work/thinking that APL'ers tend to do. It is a very
very
good "Software Engineers Workbench".

We need another round of GUI work on the APL side soon. Problem right
now is that there are SO many paradigms floating around and new tools
being invented every minute, that it is hard to pick one to use as
the
basis for your nicely integrated tool. APLers don't tend to enjoy
switching platform every couple of years just to play with new
technology.

The design of so many of these tools is also aimed at ultra simple
transactional web apps, and often not appropriate to analytical
computing.

It is only a matter of time, though - we'll get there. In the mean
time,
a little extra work is required to hook the components up if you want
to go beyond Windows or .Net GUI and Web front ends. Note that this
DOES
include a vast array of custom controls etc, these are all usable from
APL.

One fundamental problem is that regardless of the tools you use,
designing a good GUI is a very different skill from writing good APL
code.
Some customers just don't want to train the guys who are good at GUI
and are even less keen on having the good APL programmers to use fancy
GUI
design tools. Of course, one of the main benefits of using APL is the
rapid prototyping that results from a very small team (often one
person)
doing everything. So there is a bit of a Catch-22 situation here.