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APL on the VT340

[ Screenshot goes here ]

This IBM 987 Selectric APL Element 'Typeball' was sold on eBay by Maven Lane for $77.00 on Feb 10, 2024.

DEC provided an APL softchar font for the VT340 that allowed programmers to write in the APL language without having to use one of those fancy IBM selectric typewriters with a special "golf ball" typing element to handle all the strange characters.


The APL programming language imposes requirements on a terminal similar to a foreign natural language. APL uses,

See the VAX APL User's Guide for information on how those pieces were defined and worked together.


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Historical footnote: Long before the VT340, DEC sold terminals for APL programming. In 1980 DEC released DECSTD-107 which defined the layout for an APL keyboard and released a specialized version of the VT102. That keyboard layout and character set was not used ten years later on the VT340.