APL2

Technical detail

The IBM APL Products and Services group is pleased to announce Service Level 8 for Workstation APL2 for Multiplatforms Version 2.0. This new service level is available for all Workstation APL2 platforms including AIX, Linux, Sun Solaris, and Windows. Along with fixes for customer reported problems, Service Level 8 contains the following enhancements:

All platforms:

APL2 is added to the list of languages and programs that are supported by the APL2 Program Interface. An external function, APL2PIA, provides a synchronous call interface for managing APL2 sessions. An auxiliary processor, AP 200, provides an asynchronous shared variable interface to the same facility.
For compatibility with mainframe APL2, comments are allowed after system commands
When passed a null right argument, the OPTION external function will return the APL2 command line.

Windows:

A new tool, the APL2 Library Manager, allows the user to explore the active APL2 workspace and APL2 workspaces, transfer files and namespaces saved on disk. Features include workspace-to-workspace comparison, object-to-object comparison, and clipboard operations to transfer objects to the active workspace.
Unicode fonts may be selected for use in the APL2 Session Manager and editor windows.
Windows XP themes will be recognized and used in all APL2 GUI windows.
File Editor, Library Manager, and SVP Monitor buttons have been added to the Session Manager toolbar.
AP 145 has been enhanced to support arbitrary arrays as event handlers, timeouts for message waits, sizeable file and folder dialogs with places buttons, more image types for the PICTURE properties, and a UNICODE HEADINGS property for listview controls. New functions added to the GUITOOLS workspace are WAIT_EVENT, FOLDERDLG and COLORDLG. Existing function POPUPMENU has been enhanced to support submenus, and FILEDLG now supports an optional title argument.

Service Level 8 is available through the Support option at the APL2 home page to customers with a Software Maintenance contract. Further information on the new facilities will be found in the updated APL2 User's Guide and on-line help after installing Service Level 8. A complete list of fixes included in this level will be found in the updated README (Unix systems) or Service Information (Windows systems) file.