Talk:AlPhAbEt

The AlPhAbEt home page is in german only, and my german isn't good enough to understand it. Hopefully someone fluent in german can write a short description of the language here. --Rune 15:53, 19 Sep 2005 (GMT)

I only noticed this language yesterday, so apologies for the delay. I've translated the specification, and now this entry is one of the most detailed on the Esolang Wiki. :-) --Safalra 19:24, 7 Oct 2005 (GMT)

Thanks for the translation, it's very good job! I gotta try this language sometime. --User:Keymaker

This was not exactly what I had in mind when I said short description :) Good work! --Rune 18:13, 10 Oct 2005 (GMT)

Is this an exact translation? If so it would likely be covered by the original copyright and can't be here, unless the author has agreed for it to be. --Graue 20:32, 7 Oct 2005 (GMT)

Don't worry, it's a fairly free translation so shouldn't cause any intellectual property problems (unless the author patented the language itself, which seems unlikely). Basically, I read a section of the specification, wrote an English equivalent, and then moved on to the next section. As a result, the grouping of operators is different, and all complex examples are my own work. --Safalra 10:22, 8 Oct 2005 (GMT)

I'm not sure my comment above was entirely clear, so I'll give a specific example. Here's part of the AlPhAbEt entry:

AlPhAbEt source code consists of ASCII text. Whitespace (other than newlines) has no effect other than to aid readability. Comments start with the 'at' character (@) and last until the end of the line on which they feature. Instructions each consist of a set of three characters, of which the first and last represent registers, and the middle represents the operation to be performed.

And here's a close-to-literal translation of the relevant part of the original specification (reproduced here under 'fair use' provisions of copyright law):

Each instruction in AlPhAbEt consists of three parts with the structure {Register}{Operator}{Register/Value}, with exceptions indicated below. Several instructions can be written one behind the other, and can be separated by spaces to increase the legibility of the source code. Comments can be added using the comment symbol ("@" (ASCII: 064)) in order to describe hard-to-understand sections of the source code. Comments can appear after executable instructions, in which case they apply up to the end of the appropriate line.

I hope this satisfies your concerns about copyright. --Safalra 12:39, 8 Oct 2005 (GMT)

The code for writing a bit to the queack and reading a bit from the queack is the same. I edited the example under "push/enqueue" since you mentioned a semi-colon there, and I assume you meant to replace the colons in the example with semicolons. --BodyTag 14:52, 8 Oct 2005 (GMT)

Hello "esolangs"... I just found your site and I am very... how to say... proud. :) Oh, let me introduce me to you. I'm Kevin Niehage, the creater of AlPhAbEt. Wow, what to say? *speechless* well... no, the language isn't patented in any way and I won't decide on a specific license until an "acceptable" status of development is reached (I'm currently thinking of something like the GPL, but if you have a better idea which to take - since the GPL isn't meant to be used on languages as far as I'm concerned). Currently I'm working on version 0.20 (it's in beta-stadium right now, so an early release will follow soon). I rewrote nearly the complete interpreter and due to that some constructs of the language have changed (the language has become a bit more structured, IMHO). Since I saw how much work has been done to translate my German description and since there will be some major changes there, I thought I might help by trying myself of a self-made translation. (Since I somehow knew, that some people are currently using the version 0.14 I decided to keep some kind of history-file (complete_014.zip / complete_014.ace) on my servers. It will - as I hope - stay there "forever".) With friendly greetings, Kevin Niehage... --shikai 21:33, 1 Nov 2005

Hello everybody, just to give a short notice... The documentation of AlPhAbEt 0.21 has been released... I hope it's more understandable and more structured than the last one for version 0.14... --shikai 12:, 12 Jan 2006