What is A+ ? A+ is a powerful and efficient programming language. It is freely available under the GNU General Public License. It embodies a rich set of functions and operators, a modern graphical user interface with many widgets and automatic synchronization of widgets and variables, asynchronous execution of functions associated with variables and events, dynamic loading of user compiled subroutines, and many other features. Execution is by a rather efficient interpreter. A+ was created at Morgan Stanley. Primarily used in a computationally-intensive business environment, many critical applications written in A+ have withstood the demands of real world developers over many years. Written in an interpreted language, A+ applications tend to be portable. Web hosting provided by Morgan Stanley. A+ Community News 2008-03-27 Fixes for 64bit. These have been released in 4.22-1. 2005-08-29 Neil Roeth has provided a patch to resolve compiler issues with the latest gcc versions. These have been released in 4.20-2. Thanks Neil! 2004-03-15 Pedro Rodrigues de Almeida has documented how to install A+ on Mac OS X (10.3.1) and setup Xemacs. This can be found in the FAQ. Thanks to Pedro for work on this detailed reference. 2003-12-30 A new source distribution, 4.20-1, is available on the Download page. This release supports the newer version of gcc and contains some bug fixes and new features. For complete details see the ChangeLog file in the distribution. 2002-06-03 Alexander Skomorokhov, Alexander Nakhabov, and Pavel Belousov have created PDF versions of the documentation from the html source. You can access them from the documentation section on the download page. Thanks to all!. This year's APL Conference (APL2002) had two accepted papers related to A+ and also featured some A+ tutorials. 2002-04-02 Neil Roeth has packaged the latest A+ release for Debian/GNU Linux system. You can access the Debian packages on the download page and find instructions on how to install them on the installation page. Thanks, Neil. 2002-02-07 There is a new context, t, for creating and working with tables in a database manner. For documentation see the "t context" under "Extensions and Tools" in the Reference Manual (in the left vertical frame towards the bottom.) There is new directory containing gadgets (utilities). Each of the A+ scripts has a corresponding .doc file describing its function. Tutorials are also included. The t context and gadgets will be included in future releases. To add these items to your current installation download and unpack the T & Gadgets file into the installation directory. E.g., cd /usr/local gunzip -c /tmp/t_and_gadgets.tar.gz | tar -xvf - 2002-01-22 Matthias Neeracher has written a simple filter script and describes the steps necessary to use the TrueType APL font (thanks Adrian) under Mac OS X in a Terminal window. E.g., your machine is too wimpy to run X11 comfortably and you don't need the A+ screen package. The procedure and download link for the filter are in the FAQ. Thank's Matthias for the neat solution. 2001-12-25 The "-8" distribution is upon us. Distributions are now available for Mac OS X, PowerPC Linux and 64bit Irix on the Download page. In addition to the usual "minor changes" for new platforms there are bug fixes/enhancements. You can check the ChangeLog. We have a new FAQ, our 4th (but 3rd in the ordering) and a tip with some XEmacs/Lisp for non-US keyboards from Tomas G. (thanks) also on the FAQ page. 2001-10-12 Distribution "-7" is ready. The MStk portion of the code has been modified to compile with current versions of GCC C++ (2.95.3, 3.0.1, etc.) Thanks Ik. That allowed us to port to a number of new platforms. Distributions for Intel IA64, IBM Z900/S360, IBM R/S6000 and NetBSD have been added. Thanks to Bob and others at IBM whose help with the AIX port applied to several other platforms too. 2001-7-24 Distribution "-6" is released. This version incorporates some source code changes to enable compiling on Compaq's Tru64(tm) Unix with cxx. A binary distribution for Tru64 is available on the Download page. An entry to the FAQ has been added with advice for users of German keyboards courtesy of Edgar M. E. Wermuth. The A+ bootable Linux CD was distributed at APL2001 and Boston USENIX 2001. This CD contains the contents of the aplusdev.org web site (including of course source, binaries and documentation). When the CD is placed in an Intel PC and booted it will run a full version of Red Hat Linux 7.1, start an X server and invoke A+ within an xterm. This is done from the CD and memory. The disk is not touched. Thus when you remove the CD and reboot you are back to your disk based operating system (e.g., Windows). This is a way to try out A+ (and Linux) with no hassle and no commitment. Thanks to the guy who put together superrescue, H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>. If you'd like a copy of the CD please send email to doc@aplusdev.org. We can also electronically send you the CD image (it's ~600MB) or you can retrieve it by prior arrangement via the above email address. 2001-4-2 Distribution "-5" is the current release. There are minor source code changes for Alpha Linux. A+ on Alpha is a 64bit version allowing one to, for example, multiply 111111111 by itself to yield the integer 12345678987654321. The Alpha Linux distributions are on the Download page. The Programs Written in A+ page has been extended, with a copy of the uniq program in A+'s ASCII character set. The fact A+ operates with three character sets (apl, ascii and uni) has been a well kept secret. See Input Mode for details. Our first known bug in the open A+ release has been fixed. It had to do with auto-conversion of little-endian/big-endian/32bit/64bit mapped files of a single scalar value. It's been noted the fonts for Solaris ought to be compressed with "compress" rather than "gzip". Beginning with "-5" the Solaris distribution will have .Z pcf fonts. Thanks Paul. 2001-3-20 Distribution "-4" is now available. There are some source code changes for FreeBSD. The binary distribution for FreeBSD is on the Download page. The distribution now contains contributed code (in the contrib directory). A couple test scripts are also included. The Installation page now has verbage addressing fonts and XEmacs installation. 2001-2-20 A binary distribution for Irix is available on the Download page. Instructions for installation on Debian/GNU Linux have been added. 2001-2-7 A binary distribution for Solaris is available on the Download page. 2001-1-26 A+ mailing list appears. See Mail Contacts. 2001-1-22 A+ is released to the public.