Walt Niehoff discusses the past and present of GRAPHPAK APL graphics package

Table of Contents

• ACM/SIGAPL Membership Form

Access to information:

• What's Where [F. H. D. van Batenburg]

Up-coming conferences:

• APL99, Scranton, Pennsylvania: August 10-14, 1999 [Stephen Mansour]

Interview:

• An Interview with Peter Donnelly and John Scholes [ as interviewed by Ray Polivka ]

Regular columns:

• With J: Using Exact Arithmetic [Cliff Reiter]

Graphics:

• Cover Story: Graphpak: A Tool-Builder's Approach to Graphical Data Presentation [Walt Niehoff ]

  There have been several APL Quote Quad papers published in the past few years that discuss requirements for APL graphics capabilities. The Graphpak workspace now distributed with IBM's APL2 products evolved from its 1970 roots in an environment that projected similar requirements. This paper discusses the characteristics of Graphpak that have contributed to its evolving application and its longevity. Following an introduction that describes its evolution, the paper will focus on its "tool box" approach--using APL functions that can be used to build other functions to meet custom graphics requirements. Also, some opportunities for future exploitation of APL2 are sketched.

History:

• APL Graphpak Recollections [Walt Niehoff ]

Technical articles:

• The Implementation of Set Functions in APL: A Proposal [Joseph DeKerf ]