From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Thu Dec 18 2003 - 12:00:07 EST
John Wilcock wrote:
> On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 09:30:42 -0500, John Cowan wrote:
> > In this case, it's logicians who use U+00AC for "not", or at least
> > some of them. It got into EBCDIC, I don't know exactly how, and from
> > there into ISO 8859-1.
>
> Wasn't it used for that purpose in APL?
When I learned to program APL in the early 80's, it was on a TRS-80,
and it required a supplementary ROM font to support the various
mathematical symbols, and the APL interpret was also using its
own keyboard layout and input method.
The NOT SIGN was not mapped where you think it was, because the
TRS-80 English or French keyboard did have this keycap (the keyboard
was nearer from old VT terminals, and derived from CPM terminals,
because the TRS-80 used CPM-80 as its background OS).
Instead, the character was composed within the APL interpret, using
the MINUS SIGN keyb on either the US or French keyboard layout...
I really doubt that the NOT SIGN was added to the International English
keyboard for APL, given that APL needs much more symbols than just
this one. In fact the International US keyboard is born long after APL
was developped and used with standard national keyboards.
As the APL interprets have continued to support their own input
methods, there was no need to map this symbol on keyboards, even if
APL interprets have been modified later to support this key position
on international English keyboards.
Even today, I can write APL programs on Windows with my French
keyboard using the input method editor which is built in the
shipped APL environment.
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