Language series ends with ZPL article

After more than three years collecting data and writing the articles which began with coverage of APL in July of 2008 the end of the promissed alphabet has been reached with the article in the November 2011 issue on the language: ZPL.

I remember seeing other articles in other  computer magazines referring to something similar, but do not recall any having done so.   However, this really is not so daunting a task as the article on XML mentions that there are a very large number of XML languages and that there  are enough so that such an alphabet of just XML articles could be accomplished.

Thankfully I will not be taking such a route.  I am approaching the age of 70 and have seen my typing skill diminish rapidly.  Words which I know how to construct wind up with letters amiss requiring back stepping to adjust.

You may find the article on the ZPL language by following this link:
http://www.pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201111/page17.html

While reviewing the text I noticed that coverage for Guile and Haskell was not given on this blog.  So another post will correct soon this.

Yorick Language is featured in October Issue

Well here is the entry for Y. And you may now know why the text of the material on the XML page was selected. For it is the text entry from the play Hamlet.

Now at last there only remains an article to cover a language which begins with Z and our English alphabet of Computer languages will be complete having made a selection of one language for each of the 26 letters.

It has been a long three years since I first made the entry for the language APL in the July 2008 issue. The promised article on the commercial version of this language was never published. However, I did make a movie showing how one would install the commercial version on their computer and that was posted on YouTube. To find it just search for videos by eronstuc.  Here you will also find videos of my little dog Liz and some showing old versions of my multi-booting computer systems.

The article for the Yorick language will be found at the following link:
http://pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201110/page16.html

Until next month.

The September issue features XML

This is interesting none of my linux hard drives are now functional. The image was captured within a live session of the Full Monty KDE4 distro. I have found a replacement and will soon be purchasing a replacement drive. So I will be back to doing as I wrote in my very first article to appear in the Magazine. That was the Dec. 2007 which showed how to setup a multi-booting multi disk system.

Not only that but Windows failed to boot so I wound up using the recovery partition to restore my XP system. This did an analysis and reported that the 320 gig and the 60 gig drive failed due to an error 18 cache. Now the recovery yielded wound up with a system with no internet access.

At that time I could still boot into Knoppix 6.5 and from here I was able to download a windows version of Firefox. This was burned to a cd and then it was installed after booting into Windows. So I have a system which is free from Internet Explorer. What had been 87 gigs now has only 20 gigs so there is much free space. Almost all the languages downloaded to windows for exploring while writing this series are gone.

Now the coverage of the material on XML is found at the following link:
http://www.pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201109/page17.html

Articles from long past discovered

While looking through my old files I found an old copy of the Super Pet Gazette which I had saved. So this developed a desire to learn if by any chance there might be other issues of this to be found on the web.

When I entered the term Super Pet Gazette into the google search engine I learned that there were indeed many items entered. There was one which contained a list of files of the Super Pet Gazette which had been saved in pdf format. This covered some but not all issues from the beginning till the gazette ended publication in 1986.

The end of the Gazette was the decision my Commodore to quit making the Super Pet. This caused many of the members to change their alliance to the Amiga which Commodore acquired or the IBM PC which seems to think they invented the PC although Apple, Radio Shack and Commodore as well as several firms manufacturing CP/M machines had been selling personal computers before IBM thought of getting into the micro computer market.

Any way these files are found at the following:

http://6502.org/documents/publications/superpet_gazette

This will take you to the list of pdf files. I am introduced as an associate editor in Vol I issue 3. Then articles I wrote are found in almost all the remaining issues till the publication ends in 1986.

Whoops left out Watfive article

In reviewing the articles it seems that the article for Watfive was left out. Unless of course there is a new alphabet in which W comes after X! So I did a search and learned that I was writing this article about last Christmas and had written the editor that because my son had been shoot I was not quite as about my wits in writing as I might have otherwise been. This fact and the upset over the passing of my wife in Janurary of 2010 were having a deffinet effect upon my attitudes.

Then in Feb. I moved to a small town in Mississippi and was not able to keep my wife's final instructions: "Take care of my little dog." This due to moving into an apartment which did not allow pets. (You can see this little dog by searching for eronstuc on You Tube and viewing some of the videos which Ive posted. The one called the Knicks have nothing on us features a larger dog Toby and the little dog Liz playing with a ball.

Now just how much trouble would a six pound dog be in an apartment. Actually she is much more housebroken than a child who wets their diapers!.

Now to correct the ommission of the Watfive article. This was featured in the June 2011 issue and the following link will take you to the article:
http://pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201106/page19.html

Well I don't know where the bug is but I have tried this on Firefox, Opera, and Chronium on the Full Monty and then Konqueror and Iceweasel on my Knoppix 6.5 partitions and even though the date is clearly 201106, each browser takes you to 201108/page19.html. Once there on the line manually change the 08 to 06 and hit the go key and you will then be viewing the Watfive article. As they said on Laughin years ago Hmmm Very Interesting.

The Feb. Issue covers Vala and Visual Basic

Because February is the shortest month in the year and because it is also the month in which I celebrate my birthday we will offer two languages this month. (An old family tradidion with the Ratliff's was to have the period from Jan 31 to Feb 6 as birthday week. My Mom's birthday was Jan. 31, my step-brother's birthday was Feb. 2, my birthday is Feb. 4, and my son-in-law's birthday is Feb. 6.)

The month is also known for St. Valentine's Day and suitably our language selections begin with the letter V. Vala is a relatively new language designed for the Gnome desktop of a Linux system. Visual Basic is a language freely availavble (or at least a limited version of it from Microsoft.)

The following link will take you to the article devoted to these languages:
http://www.pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201102/page20.html

Jan 2011 issue covers Unicon

An earlier post covered the Icon language. The author of the language when told that this would not function in the PCLINUX distribution told me that users should watch the links as it was still being actively developed. So if possible it would be modified to function with many versions of linux.

At present my access to the internet has been inturrupted and I am reaching it through the local library. This post will be modified to include the cover of the Jan. issue as well as other information once I have regained access to the internet from home.

To see the post of this language coverage check out the following link:

http://www.pclosmag.com/html/Issues/201101/page17.html