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From: jeh@sisd.kodak.com (Ed Hanway)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: REXX command standards
Message-ID: <1990Nov15.164447.5607@sisd.kodak.com>
Date: 15 Nov 90 16:44:47 GMT
References: <1990Nov12.224249.18759@sisd.kodak.com> <533@epicb.com> <15874@cbmvax.commodore.com>
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darren@cbmvax.commodore.com (Darren Greenwald) writes:
>	1.) Those that have supported ARexx would need to update
>	    their software, supplied scripts, and user created
>	    scripts to come up to spec.

Not necessarily.  You can always keep your old commands around for
backward compatibility, in addition to the standard commands.  The only
problem would be if the same command word was already in use with a
different syntax, and even then, it's usually possible to support either
syntax.

>                                         Kind of tough on those
>	    who supported ARexx, and its going to be hard to
>	    come up with much in the way of agreements (I suspect).

Yeah, if there's not active participation by all interested parties,
someone could ram through a standard that would be close to their
current implementation but would require a lot of work from anyone else.

Ideally, the standards should be minimal, i.e. a set of commands large enough
to be useful, but easily implemented by any program of the same general type.
The problem is that both criteria are open to interpretation.  For example,
in a text editor, is regular expression search easy to implement?  Would the
lack of it make some useful REXX programs difficult to implement?
--
Ed Hanway --- uunet!sisd!jeh
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