Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cimshop!davidm From: cimshop!davidm@uunet.UU.NET (David S. Masterson) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Re: REXX command standards Message-ID: Date: 18 Nov 90 23:21:38 GMT References: <1990Nov14.033931.12883@evax.arl.utexas.edu> <1990Nov17.151516.14252@sisd.kodak.com> Sender: davidm@cimshop.UUCP Distribution: comp Organization: Consilium Inc., Mountain View, California. Lines: 34 In-reply-to: jeh@sisd.kodak.com's message of 17 Nov 90 15:15:16 GMT X-Posting-Software: GNUS 3.12 [ NNTP-based News Reader for GNU Emacs ] >>>>> On 17 Nov 90 15:15:16 GMT, jeh@sisd.kodak.com (Ed Hanway) said: Ed> As Mike Meyer pointed out, simply taking every command that a program has Ed> and creating an AREXX equivalent for it isn't a good way to develop a Ed> standard. Simple things like port name and command syntax conventions Ed> should be relatively easy to agree on. The hard part will be agreeing on Ed> what commands should (and should not) be included in a standard. On the other hand, you don't want to make programs more complex by possibly having to support two significantly different standards for command interface. For instance, (as Mike Meyer made mention of) MG3 already has a command standard based on the GNU Emacs command standard. This is useful for those people already very familiar with GNU Emacs. If the AREXX command standard forced MG3 to support things like 'CUT = KILL-REGION', then new users to MG3 would have to learn the Emacs language for interactive use followed by the AREXX standard for scripting. Perhaps an alternative suggestion to an AREXX command standard would be a single command by which AREXX could ask the program in question what its command equivalents for the AREXX standard would be. The result of such a command would be a list that's indexed by the standard commands. Scripts desiring to be standard would work indirectly off this list whereas people not up to standardization yet would use the program's internal commands directly (because those are the one's they would most like learn first). This is a neophyte suggestion, so does this make sense? -- ==================================================================== David Masterson Consilium, Inc. (415) 691-6311 640 Clyde Ct. uunet!cimshop!davidm Mtn. View, CA 94043 ==================================================================== "If someone thinks they know what I said, then I didn't say it!"