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The APL Orchard is a Stack Exchange chat room dedicated to learn and teach APL, and to ask and answer questions about both golfing and general coding in APL. It began on January 24, 2017, and remains the most active APL chat room today.
[[File:APL Orchard activity.png|thumb|right|Typical activity over a 24-hour period (UTC)]]
'''The APL Orchard''' is a [[wikipedia:Stack Exchange|Stack Exchange]] chat room dedicated to learn and teach APL, and to ask and answer questions about both golfing and general coding in APL. It was opened by [[Adám Brudzewsky]] on January 24, 2017, and has since developed its own community, remaining the most active APL chat room today, with over a thousand messages per week. It passed a total of a hundred thousand messages, and two hundred users, in July 2020. The [[#Chat_bot|chat bot]] synchronises the Stack Exchange room with the [[wikipedia:Freenode|Freenode]] #apl IRC room. Many participants arrive as complete beginners when it comes to APL, some not even knowing what APL is, instead being attracted by the room being among the most active on Stack Exchange, others are APL veterans.


=== Live lessons ===
== Access ==
:{{Main|APL Cultivation}}
[[File:Generic avatar.png|thumb|right|The giant avatar]]
From 18 October 2017 until 16 May 2018, [[Adám Brudzewsky]] ran a series of 29 weekly 90-minute study sessions, covering most aspects of basic APL programming. Beginning 28 November 2019, he resumed the series with more in-depth lessons every two-three weeks.
While anyone can read the ongoing and past conversations, write access requires a Stack Exchange account and either 20 [https://stackoverflow.com/help/whats-reputation Stack Exchange reputation] points or having been granted explicit write access by a moderator. The procedure for getting explicit write access is as follows:
<!--
=== Chat bot ===
 
The room features a chat bot which can evaluate single lines of APL. To use it, prefix a chat message by <source lang=apl inline>⍞←</source>, but note that only the first line of the result will come back. Prefix with <source lang=apl inline>⎕←</source> or <source lang=apl inline>⋄</source> for boxed display and multi-line results. Use <source lang=apl inline>]</source> to prefix user commands (without <source lang=apl inline>⍞←</source> or <source lang=apl inline>⎕←</source> or <source lang=apl inline>⋄</source>), including e.g. <source lang=apl inline>]help ⍣</source> for help on the <source lang=apl inline>⍣</source> glyph etc. Do not use markdown, but fixed-width (4 or more initial spaces, which can be inserted by pressing <kbd>Ctrl</kbd>+<kbd>K</kbd>) is fine. This also ensures proper rendering with monospace font and avoids interpretation of APL symbols as markdown.
 
Only a few special [[system command]]s are available: <source lang=apl inline>)lb</source> for language bar, <source lang=apl inline>)docs</source> for full documentation, <source lang=apl inline>)ref</source> for a link to the PDF reference card, <source lang=apl inline>)idioms</source> for a link to a searchable [[idiom|idiomatic expressions]] list.
-->
=== Access ===
 
While anyone can read the ongoing and past conversations, write access requires 20 Stack Exchange reputation points or having been granted explicit write access by a moderator. The procedure for getting explicit write access is as follows:


# Go to the chat room
# Go to the chat room
Line 20: Line 11:
# Copy the URL of the page that opens (e.g. "<nowiki>https://chat.stackexchange.com/users/123456/johndoe</nowiki>")
# Copy the URL of the page that opens (e.g. "<nowiki>https://chat.stackexchange.com/users/123456/johndoe</nowiki>")
# Email that URL to support@dyalog.com
# Email that URL to support@dyalog.com
== Features ==
=== Messages ===
In the chat you can use a simplified subset of [[wikipedia:markdown|markdown]] for simple formatting like ''italics'', '''bold''' and <s>strikethrough</s>. You can include [[wikipedia:Easter_egg_(media)|links]] in your messages, or post an image. See [[{{PAGENAME}}#Basic formatting|below]] for details. The [https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/1/sandbox Sandbox] room can be used to experiment with the chat system without bothering anyone.
To write a message, type into the input field and press <kbd>Enter</kbd> or click the <kbd>send</kbd> button to submit.
To post an image which is already hosted online, submit a message consisting exclusively of the URL to the image. Users with sufficient Stack Exchange reputation, see an <kbd>upload…</kbd> to the right <kbd>send</kbd>, allowing uploading images directly from their computer.
A user can be pinged (audio is played on their device) by writing <source lang=md inline>@</source>, followed by the username without spaces. On the top-right, to the left of <kbd>all rooms</kbd> you can configure the sound of notifications. If the user hasn't been in the room before, or hasn't been in it for long enough, they might not be pingable. The Stack Exchange Android app allows receiving ping notifications as push notifications regardless of whether you're in the room. There is no way to ping everyone in the room, although <code>@all</code> is used as a non-pinging convention when addressing everyone.
To mark a message as potentially valuable for others, hover over it and and click the dark grey star (<span style=color:#222222>★</span>). This will cause it to turns yellow (<span style=color:#f3c200>★</span>) and the message will be visible on the starboard (the right sidebar) for some time. Click again to un-star.
To enter APL characters, see the article on [[typing glyphs]].
=== Replies ===
To reply to a specific message, hover over the message you want to reply to and click <kbd>↳</kbd> in the bottom-right corner of that message. This will insert a code similar to <code>:12345678</code> into the input field. Proceed to type your response and press enter or click <kbd>send</kbd> to send it. Note that replying to a message pings the user who wrote the message. To reply to users posting from IRC, via the chat bot, it is preferred to use <source lang=md inline>name:</source> instead of <code>@name</code>. Note that IRC users do not see edits, deletions, or formatting.
You can view what a message was a reply to by clicking the reply indicator icon <kbd>↰</kbd> to the left of a message, which will either focus the target message on the screen, or, if the target message is too far in the past, open up the transcript pointing to the target message. Alternatively, hovering over a message will highlight the message it is replying to, and all its replies.
=== Basic formatting ===
* '''Italics''': <source lang=md inline>*italics*</source> or <source lang=md inline>_italics_</source>
* '''Bold''': <source lang=md inline>**bold**</source> or <source lang=md inline>__bold__</source>
* '''Strike through''': <source lang=md inline>---strike through---</source>
* '''Inline code:''' <source lang=md inline>`inline code`</source> <ref>Backticks can be escaped with a backslash (<source lang=md inline>`\`x\`y`</source> renders as <code>`x`y</code>). Alternatively, <code>```multiple``backticks\```</code>, which also disable <code>\</code>-escaping, can be used, giving <code>multiple``backticks\</code> - use a delimiter with one more backtick than the longest run of backticks in the code. Note that inline code cannot have leading white-space.</ref>
* '''Link''': <source lang=md inline>https://example.com</source> or <source lang=md inline>[display me](https://example.com)</source> or <source lang=md inline>[display me](https://example.com "hover text")</source><ref>Long URLs will be truncated with an ellipsis. A URL that exceeds the maximum message length of 500 characters can still be posted as a raw URL (without markdown): Follow it by <kbd>Shift</kbd>+<kbd>Enter</kbd>.</ref>
* '''Tags''': <source lang=md inline>[tag:code-golf]</source> or <source lang=md inline>[meta-tag:discussion]</source> (tags from Stack Exchange's [[code golf]] community, [https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/ Code Golf & Coding Challenges])
* '''Oneboxes:''' When posted alone in a message, optionally preceded by a reply indicator (<code>:12345678</code>), some links (images, Wikipedia pages, Stack Exchange links, etc.) get "oneboxed", giving them an expanded display with special formatting.
=== Multiline messages ===
It's possible to insert write line breaks in messages with <kbd>Shift</kbd>+<kbd>Enter</kbd>, however, this disables normal markdown.
If each line of a message is preceded by 4 spaces (can automatically be inserted with with <kbd>Ctrl</kbd>+<kbd>k</kbd> or with the <kbd>fixed font</kbd> button once multiple lines have been entered), the whole message will appear in monospace font. Note that individual lines cannot be formatted this way, and that there is no support for "code fences" (triple backticks before and after code).
To post a mixture of body text and code blocks, simply posting multiple messages in quick succession. The chat will render them as if merged into a single message.
=== After posting ===
Within 2 minutes of posting a message, it can be edited or deleted. The edit history of a message (unless it has been deleted) is publicly visible ― see "history" when clicking <kbd>▼</kbd> actions on the left of a message.
A [[wikipedia:permalink|permalink]] of a message can be gotten by copying the link on the <kbd>▼</kbd> actions panel.
The user interface doesn't directly allow replying to oneself. However, there is a work-around: Click <kbd>▼</kbd> actions on the left of your message and copy the permalink. The message number is after the pound sign <code>#</code> in the URL. Copy it and start your message with a colon and the pasted number immediately after, for example <code>:1234568 Really?</code>.
In the transcript, the edit history is available for all messages, and this view includes the source of a message. The easiest way to reach it is to middle-click the <kbd>▼</kbd> action menu on the left of the wanted message to open the transcript in a new tab (or click, then click "permalink", if you don't have a middle mouse button), then click <kbd>▼</kbd> and then "history".
=== Chat bot ===
The room features a chat bot, '''Dyalog APL''', which can evaluate a safe subset of APL.<ref>Using [[Adám Brudzewsky]]'s [https://github.com/abrudz/dyalog-safe-exec Safe Execute for Dyalog APL] tool.</ref> To use it, prefix a chat message, inline code, or a code block with <source lang=apl inline>⋄</source>. Using markdown (for example <source lang=md inline>`⋄ 2+3`</source>) or fixed-width (4 or more initial spaces on each line, which can be inserted by pressing <kbd>Ctrl</kbd>+<kbd>k</kbd>) is highly recommended for readability and to avoid interpretation of APL symbols as markdown.
=== APL execution userscript ===
Similar in functionality to the chat bot, the userscript adds an [[Execute]] button (<kbd>⍎</kbd>) to the right of the chat box. Clicking it or hitting access-key<ref>The keyboard combination varies by browser and operating system. For details, see  W3Schools' [https://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_global_accesskey.asp#table2 HTML accesskey Attribute] article.</ref> <kbd>x</kbd>, uses the [[Running APL|TryAPL]] API to execute the first line currently in the chat box, and appends the result to the chat box, while also formatting the chat box content to be rendered in monospace font. One can then hit the <kbd>send</kbd> button or <kbd>Enter</kbd> to submit the message. With a userscript extension (for example [https://www.tampermonkey.net/ Tampermonkey]) installed, navigating to [https://github.com/razetime/userscripts/raw/main/chatexec.user.js the raw file], should cause the extension to suggest automated installation. Alternatively, the script can be downloaded from the [https://github.com/razetime/userscripts userscripts GitHub repository] of [[User:Razetime|Razetime]], or from the [https://greasyfork.org/en Greasyfork userscript host] under the name [https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/419379-chat-box-exec Chat box exec].
== Conventions ==
Since a lot of questions are repeated, it is courteous to search for an answer on [[APLcart]] before asking in the APL Orchard.
Announcements are made with the initial markdown <source lang=md inline>**Announcement:**</source> rendering the text in bold.
Some abbreviations are ubiquitous, like ''TMN'' for ''[[Comparison with traditional mathematics|Traditional Mathematical Notation]]'', and ''CMC'' for ''Chat Mini Challenge'' which usually implies an informal [[code golf]] competition. Additional terms an abbreviations are shared with [https://codegolf.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/12537/what-are-our-specific-abbreviations-and-terms/12538#12538 those of the Stack Exchange code golf community]. When posting such a chat mini challenge, the task specification is prefaced with the markdown <source lang=md inline>**CMC:**</source>, rendering the text in bold.
Some use a reply of <source lang=md inline>+←1</source> to indicate agreement or appreciation,<ref>Thus is a pun on the APL expression <source lang=apl inline>counter+←1</source> increasing the counter (of "likes") by one.</ref> similar to how "+1" or "👍" is used in other social media.
=== Emoticons ===
{|
| <source lang=md inline>○/</source> || greeting, farewell
|-
| <source lang=md inline>⍨</source> || frown, displeasure, "hmpf"
|-
| <source lang=md inline>\○/</source> || despair, wonderment, "wow"  (be careful as this can be positive or negative)
|-
| <source lang=md inline>¯\_(⍨)_/¯</source> || "oh well"
|-
| <source lang=md inline>∘.○</source> || "I'm confused"
|}
== Live sessions ==
=== APL Cultivation ===
:{{Main|APL Cultivation}}
From 18 October 2017 until 16 May 2018, [[Adám Brudzewsky]] ran a series of 29 weekly 90-minute study sessions, covering most aspects of basic APL programming. Beginning 28 November 2019, he resumed the series with 20 more in-depth lessons every two weeks, ending 25 August, 2020.
=== APL Seeds ===
In 2020, [[Marshall Lochbaum]] ran a mini-series 60-minute live chat lessons on implementing APL-like languages, especially focusing on [[BQN]]:
{|class=wikitable
! Lesson !! Title !! Date
|-
| S1 || [https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/52405/conversation/lesson-s1-parenthesis-nesting-level Parenthesis nesting level] || Jun 10, 2020
|-
| S2 || [https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/52405/conversation/lesson-s2-infix-to-rpn Infix to RPN] || Jun 24, 2020
|-
| S3 || [https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/52405/conversation/lesson-s3-parsing-expressions-with-parentheses Parsing expressions with parentheses] || July 8, 2020
|}


== External links ==
== External links ==


* [https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/52405/the-apl-orchard Website]
* [https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/52405/the-apl-orchard Chat room]
* [https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/info/52405/the-apl-orchard Room info]
* [https://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/52405 Full transcript]


{{APL community}}[[Category:Online forums]]
== Notes==
<references/>
{{APL community}}[[Category:Online forums]][[Category:Tutorials]]

Revision as of 18:52, 23 January 2021

Typical activity over a 24-hour period (UTC)

The APL Orchard is a Stack Exchange chat room dedicated to learn and teach APL, and to ask and answer questions about both golfing and general coding in APL. It was opened by Adám Brudzewsky on January 24, 2017, and has since developed its own community, remaining the most active APL chat room today, with over a thousand messages per week. It passed a total of a hundred thousand messages, and two hundred users, in July 2020. The chat bot synchronises the Stack Exchange room with the Freenode #apl IRC room. Many participants arrive as complete beginners when it comes to APL, some not even knowing what APL is, instead being attracted by the room being among the most active on Stack Exchange, others are APL veterans.

Access

The giant avatar

While anyone can read the ongoing and past conversations, write access requires a Stack Exchange account and either 20 Stack Exchange reputation points or having been granted explicit write access by a moderator. The procedure for getting explicit write access is as follows:

  1. Go to the chat room
  2. Click the giant lower-left avatar
  3. Click "user profile"
  4. Copy the URL of the page that opens (e.g. "https://chat.stackexchange.com/users/123456/johndoe")
  5. Email that URL to support@dyalog.com

Features

Messages

In the chat you can use a simplified subset of markdown for simple formatting like italics, bold and strikethrough. You can include links in your messages, or post an image. See below for details. The Sandbox room can be used to experiment with the chat system without bothering anyone.

To write a message, type into the input field and press Enter or click the send button to submit.

To post an image which is already hosted online, submit a message consisting exclusively of the URL to the image. Users with sufficient Stack Exchange reputation, see an upload… to the right send, allowing uploading images directly from their computer.

A user can be pinged (audio is played on their device) by writing @, followed by the username without spaces. On the top-right, to the left of all rooms you can configure the sound of notifications. If the user hasn't been in the room before, or hasn't been in it for long enough, they might not be pingable. The Stack Exchange Android app allows receiving ping notifications as push notifications regardless of whether you're in the room. There is no way to ping everyone in the room, although @all is used as a non-pinging convention when addressing everyone.

To mark a message as potentially valuable for others, hover over it and and click the dark grey star (). This will cause it to turns yellow () and the message will be visible on the starboard (the right sidebar) for some time. Click again to un-star.

To enter APL characters, see the article on typing glyphs.

Replies

To reply to a specific message, hover over the message you want to reply to and click in the bottom-right corner of that message. This will insert a code similar to :12345678 into the input field. Proceed to type your response and press enter or click send to send it. Note that replying to a message pings the user who wrote the message. To reply to users posting from IRC, via the chat bot, it is preferred to use name: instead of @name. Note that IRC users do not see edits, deletions, or formatting.

You can view what a message was a reply to by clicking the reply indicator icon to the left of a message, which will either focus the target message on the screen, or, if the target message is too far in the past, open up the transcript pointing to the target message. Alternatively, hovering over a message will highlight the message it is replying to, and all its replies.

Basic formatting

  • Italics: *italics* or _italics_
  • Bold: **bold** or __bold__
  • Strike through: ---strike through---
  • Inline code: `inline code` [1]
  • Link: https://example.com or [display me](https://example.com) or [display me](https://example.com "hover text")[2]
  • Tags: [tag:code-golf] or [meta-tag:discussion] (tags from Stack Exchange's code golf community, Code Golf & Coding Challenges)
  • Oneboxes: When posted alone in a message, optionally preceded by a reply indicator (:12345678), some links (images, Wikipedia pages, Stack Exchange links, etc.) get "oneboxed", giving them an expanded display with special formatting.

Multiline messages

It's possible to insert write line breaks in messages with Shift+Enter, however, this disables normal markdown.

If each line of a message is preceded by 4 spaces (can automatically be inserted with with Ctrl+k or with the fixed font button once multiple lines have been entered), the whole message will appear in monospace font. Note that individual lines cannot be formatted this way, and that there is no support for "code fences" (triple backticks before and after code).

To post a mixture of body text and code blocks, simply posting multiple messages in quick succession. The chat will render them as if merged into a single message.

After posting

Within 2 minutes of posting a message, it can be edited or deleted. The edit history of a message (unless it has been deleted) is publicly visible ― see "history" when clicking actions on the left of a message.

A permalink of a message can be gotten by copying the link on the actions panel.

The user interface doesn't directly allow replying to oneself. However, there is a work-around: Click actions on the left of your message and copy the permalink. The message number is after the pound sign # in the URL. Copy it and start your message with a colon and the pasted number immediately after, for example :1234568 Really?.

In the transcript, the edit history is available for all messages, and this view includes the source of a message. The easiest way to reach it is to middle-click the action menu on the left of the wanted message to open the transcript in a new tab (or click, then click "permalink", if you don't have a middle mouse button), then click and then "history".

Chat bot

The room features a chat bot, Dyalog APL, which can evaluate a safe subset of APL.[3] To use it, prefix a chat message, inline code, or a code block with . Using markdown (for example `⋄ 2+3`) or fixed-width (4 or more initial spaces on each line, which can be inserted by pressing Ctrl+k) is highly recommended for readability and to avoid interpretation of APL symbols as markdown.

APL execution userscript

Similar in functionality to the chat bot, the userscript adds an Execute button () to the right of the chat box. Clicking it or hitting access-key[4] x, uses the TryAPL API to execute the first line currently in the chat box, and appends the result to the chat box, while also formatting the chat box content to be rendered in monospace font. One can then hit the send button or Enter to submit the message. With a userscript extension (for example Tampermonkey) installed, navigating to the raw file, should cause the extension to suggest automated installation. Alternatively, the script can be downloaded from the userscripts GitHub repository of Razetime, or from the Greasyfork userscript host under the name Chat box exec.

Conventions

Since a lot of questions are repeated, it is courteous to search for an answer on APLcart before asking in the APL Orchard.

Announcements are made with the initial markdown **Announcement:** rendering the text in bold.

Some abbreviations are ubiquitous, like TMN for Traditional Mathematical Notation, and CMC for Chat Mini Challenge which usually implies an informal code golf competition. Additional terms an abbreviations are shared with those of the Stack Exchange code golf community. When posting such a chat mini challenge, the task specification is prefaced with the markdown **CMC:**, rendering the text in bold.

Some use a reply of +←1 to indicate agreement or appreciation,[5] similar to how "+1" or "👍" is used in other social media.

Emoticons

○/ greeting, farewell
frown, displeasure, "hmpf"
\○/ despair, wonderment, "wow" (be careful as this can be positive or negative)
¯\_(⍨)_/¯ "oh well"
∘.○ "I'm confused"

Live sessions

APL Cultivation

Main article: APL Cultivation

From 18 October 2017 until 16 May 2018, Adám Brudzewsky ran a series of 29 weekly 90-minute study sessions, covering most aspects of basic APL programming. Beginning 28 November 2019, he resumed the series with 20 more in-depth lessons every two weeks, ending 25 August, 2020.

APL Seeds

In 2020, Marshall Lochbaum ran a mini-series 60-minute live chat lessons on implementing APL-like languages, especially focusing on BQN:

Lesson Title Date
S1 Parenthesis nesting level Jun 10, 2020
S2 Infix to RPN Jun 24, 2020
S3 Parsing expressions with parentheses July 8, 2020

External links

Notes

  1. Backticks can be escaped with a backslash (`\`x\`y` renders as `x`y). Alternatively, ```multiple``backticks\```, which also disable \-escaping, can be used, giving multiple``backticks\ - use a delimiter with one more backtick than the longest run of backticks in the code. Note that inline code cannot have leading white-space.
  2. Long URLs will be truncated with an ellipsis. A URL that exceeds the maximum message length of 500 characters can still be posted as a raw URL (without markdown): Follow it by Shift+Enter.
  3. Using Adám Brudzewsky's Safe Execute for Dyalog APL tool.
  4. The keyboard combination varies by browser and operating system. For details, see W3Schools' HTML accesskey Attribute article.
  5. Thus is a pun on the APL expression counter+←1 increasing the counter (of "likes") by one.
APL community [edit]
Conferences and activities Advent of CodeAPL CampfireAPL CultivationAPL Meetup (Portuguese) ∙ APL ShowAPL Problem Solving CompetitionAPL ChallengeAPL QuestAPL SeedsArray CastBAA sessionsCode golfDyalog user meetingsDyalog webinarsIverson Award
Chat rooms and forums APL FarmAPL Orchard
User groups APL et J (France) ∙ APL Germany (terminology) ∙ APL ∊ BCN (Spain) ∙ BAA (UK) ∙ FinnAPL (Finland) ∙ SIGAPL (USA) ∙ Tokyo APL/J/K Meetup (Japan)
People Phil AbramsBrian BeckerBob BerneckyLarry BreedCharles BrennerJim BrownAdám BrudzewskyGitte ChristensenPeter DonnellyJohn EarnestAdin FalkoffGarth FosterLib GibsonAaron HsuRoger HuiKen IversonMorten KrombergDick LathwellMarshall LochbaumEugene McDonnellRoger MooreTrenchard MoreAlan PerlisHenry RichAl RoseJohn ScholesIan SharpBob SmithGeoff StreeterArthur Whitney
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