APL+Win 6.0 represents the continuing support by APL2000 for the APL application development language on the Microsoft Windows 2000/XP operating system platform.

Delivery of the APL+Win 6.0 is expected in the 1^st quarter of 2006.   Currently the APL2000 staff is performing quality control testing on this version, including the new Microsoft Vista operating system platform (due to be released by Microsoft as a production release in mid-2006).

• APL File Shell Extension
• onContextMenu Event Handler
• New ŒMOM Object System
• Implicit Output Control Enhancement
• Exception Handling Control Structures Enhancement
• File Open Mode Information Enhancement
• APL Delay Statement Enhancement
• Initial Support for Unicode Character Data
• Session Manager Enhancements
• Compressed Data Format Support
• APL+Grid Enhancements

The information provided in this document is subject to change as the testing is completed and as additional customer needs are identified.

APL File Shell Extension:

The APLFileShExt.DLL module displays component information about your APL share and colossal component files in the Windows Explorer. When you look at the properties of the file there will be another tab (Component Summary) with additional information specific to APL component files.   The information shown includes name of the file, the component file type (original or colossal), the component index range, the file size, and some information about space used.   For colossal files, if component 0 exists and is either a character vector or matrix or a two-column nested array where each item is a character vector, then its contents are also displayed.

onContextMenu Event Handler:

When the user clicks the right mouse button in a window, the ContextMenu event fires, with the mouse position in ŒWARG.

New ŒMOM Object System:

The ŒMOM object system extends APL with simple facilities for object oriented programming, a predominant design and structuring paradigm for modern programming languages. MOM objects are typeless, classless, and inherently polymorphic.  They provide syntactic and semantic foundations for future elaboration guided by experience.  Entirely internal to APL, MOM objects are not related to ŒWI objects, COM objects, ActiveX objects, or any other family of objects.

More details & examples...

Implicit Output Control Enhancement:

The system command )OUTPUT helps to manage implicit output. This command allows the programmer to turn implicit output off or on. It also provides a means for locating code which performs implicit output. The command sets a three state switch in the active workspace. This switch is workspace relative. It is saved with the workspace on a )SAVE command and loaded with the workspace on a )LOAD command.
The )CLEAR command resets it to the default value.

Implicit output states only apply to expressions executed within a function or an event handler. They do not apply to immediate execution statements.

The three states are set by the following arguments to the system command:

)OUTPUT ON

This is the default state.   Implicit output is generated by any APL expression that does not assign its result.

)OUTPUT OFF

In this state Implicit output is not generated.

)OUTPUT ERROR

This state is used to locate expressions that generate implicit output. In this state execution of any expression that would generate implicit output in the default state causes an IMPLICIT OUTPUT ERROR. An expression beginning with 0 0½ by definition generates no output and so does not cause an IMPLICIT OUTPUT ERROR.

)OUTPUT

This command prints the current implicit output state.   The other three commands print the previous implicit output state.

Exception Handling Control Structures Enhancement:

:TRY

APL_statement(s) performing application-specific functions

:CATCHIF APL_boolean

APL_statement(s) performing appropriate error-handling

:CATCHALL

APL_statement(s) performing additional error handling

:ENDTRY

File Open Mode Information Enhancement:

File tie state information is now available via a new monadic variant of the ŒNTIE, ŒXNTIE, ŒXFTIE, ŒFTIE, and ŒCFTIE functions.

Monadic forms of these functions take a tie number as the right argument and return a two-element integer vector indicating the file tie state.

The values of the first element are the same as the open mode arguments to the dyadic version of ŒNTIE and indicate what the current open mode of the file is.   These same values apply for the component and colossal component ties.   The open mode values are sums of the following:

For native file ties, if an open mode argument was specified when the file was tied, the result of monadic ŒNTIE is that value.   If no open mode argument was specified the return value is dependent on whether read or write access is granted and what value of <network> was specified in the APL configuration file.   For the component and colossal component file ties, the values are dependent on whether the tie request was for a shared or exclusive tie and whether read or write access is granted.

The second element indicates if the tie was share tie (i.e. ŒFSTIE, ŒXFSTIE, or ŒCFSTIE) or an exclusive tie (i.e. ŒFTIE, ŒXFTIE, ŒCFTIE).   Share ties show a value of 0, exclusive ties show a value of 1.   The values of the second element are applicable only to component and colossal component file ties. The second element value is meaningless for native file ties.

APL Delay Statement Enhancement:

ŒDL has been enhanced to better share CPU resources while maintaining support for the user interface.   There are no changes required to your application.

Initial Support for Unicode Character Data

ŒUCS system function supports a 32-bit Unicode character data representation.
Initially support is provided for some primitives and planned for others and the other primitives yield the appropriate NONCE or DOMAIN error messages.
Unicode character data displayed in the Session Manager will be shown as <<<UCS Characters>>>.

The ŒWI interface with Windows has been enhanced to interchange Unicode character data with ActiveX controls.   The unicodebstr property has been added to control this behavior.

ŒDR data type for Unicode character data is 322.

Session Manager Enhancements:

The information retained in the log file has been enhanced to include version and other data.   A new INI file setting, [Session]"Logging System Info" has been added to control this.   Including any of the following keywords, separated by commas, in Logging System Info will display the corresponding information at the beginning of the session:

The highlight scrolling speed is now automatically adjusted. When using the mouse to highlight text, the scrolling speed is determined by the distance of the mouse from the client area of the session. The further the mouse is from the client area, the faster the text is scrolled. The rate of change is inversely dependant on the distance. So slow scrolling changes quickly as the mouse is moved and fast scrolling changes less quickly. If the mouse is moved all the way to the top or bottom of the screen, control of the scroll speed is released and scrolling speed proceeds at its maximum rate.

Compressed Data Format Support:

A new facility to deflate (compress) and inflate (uncompress) data objects using ŒDR. With this option it is possible to trade the processing time to deflate/inflate for a reduction in the volume of data transmitted over the web or stored in files.

APL+Grid Enhancements:

As presented at the 2005 APL2000 User Conference.