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From: seifert@sun1.ruf.uni-freiburg.de (Ulrich Seifert)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.programmer
Subject: OS/2 2.0 APIs
Keywords: OS/2 2.0 API
Message-ID: <1990Sep4.130929.16442@sun1.ruf.uni-freiburg.de>
Date: 4 Sep 90 13:09:29 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: Rechenzentrum der Universitaet Freiburg, Deutschland
Lines: 36

Why not talking a little bit about OS/2 vs. 2.0 ?

Slowly but surely some magazines start writing on the upcoming version 2.0.
Anyway, the informations that I could get up to now are a little bit confusing.
So I thought that this might be a good place to post a few questions and
maybe start a small discussion:

One of the features that are completely unclear to me concern the new APIs.
As far as I read there will be the "old" 16-bit API and a new 32-bit API.
Some Kbd, Mou,...  will be discontinued.
Well, what I don't see in the moment is how software development is supposed
to work in future. My line of reasoning is that there are quite a few systems
around running on a 286. As far as I understand there will be no way to have
the new 32-bit API on these machines (?).
Assuming this I would really like to know if anybody plans to use these new
features since I guess that the market will get completely crazy dealing with
two kinds of OS/2 software for different versions.
Or maybe my assumptions are wrong:
A better alternative might be if the new APIs would be provided for 286-
machines, too. However, these functions would have to be mapped onto the
capabilities of this hardware (what will probably be a complete mess).
From the user's point of view this would be very nice since he doesn't have
to worry about upgrading his software if he gets a new motherboard. On the
other side software developement would be a lot easier since there would be
only one kind of OS/2 version and not a few. I just try to imagine a software
company developing two OS/2 versions (286 and 386+...) for a market that isn't
that huge anyway...

Is there anybody who would like to comment on this? I guess there are quite
a lot of people (at least outside the U.S. where information is coming bitwise)
who would like to know a little bit more.

Thanks !

Uli