Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!amdahl!nuchat!peter From: peter@nuchat.UUCP (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Time is of the essence on IPC. Message-ID: <903@nuchat.UUCP> Date: 8 Apr 88 02:09:40 GMT References: <1571@louie.udel.EDU> <353@brambo.UUCP> <1661@louie.udel.EDU> <1954@dino.ulowell.edu> Organization: Public Access - Houston, Tx Lines: 92 Look, I'm sure you're a phenomenal programmer, Bill. I'm ready to be amazed by your prowess, but I just can't get over the feeling that you don't really grok it. Putting pipes in a console handler? Defining an IPC protocol that's hooked up to a programming language? You seem to have a genius for mixing your metaphors. Did you have anything to do with the design of System V IPC? Have you ever heard of the paper "cat -v considered harmful"? I just find your programs frustrating. They're not Zen. They're so un-Amiga. Maybe it's just a matter of personal style, but I can't get over the feeling that we're not really working on the same machine. I'm not expressing myself very well, am I? Can you see what I'm getting at, though... In article <1954@dino.ulowell.edu>, hawes@dino.ulowell.edu (Bill Hawes) writes: > Don't I wish! Most of the AmigaDOS commands are at best marginally useful > as filters. I'm getting comments back from WShell customers (many of whom > haven't been exposed to piping before) asking for more examples of its uses. > Maybe some of you with drawers full of filter programs could select your > favorites and send them to me? That's why you want pipes to be something apart from ConMan. Then you can have your shell build its pipelines using that pipe device, and then used the fact that you have named pipes to hook in the programs that haven't been set up as filters. For gobs of pipable programs, just send them a few comp.sources.unix archives. > Shucks, I guess not all the best things in life are free :-) > I tried to price AREXX low enough so that people wouldn't hesitate to try > it, and ignored advice to price it higher (from people who know lots more > about marketing than I do.) If the price really is an obstacle, maybe we > could take up a collection here to buy you a copy. It's not the cost for a single copy. It's the fact that I can't distribute it with Browser. I can't even use it in any important way in a commercial program because it's not free. All I can do is provide a port and *hope* that people will react with "wow, that's neat" instead of "what the f*** is rexx". Now if it came with a dumb non-programmable version that I could just stick on the disk and use to talk directly to other programs, that'd be a different matter. But then if it did that I could also use other programming languages than REXX. Like icon, forth, etc... > >I asked "what about an AREXX:", and was met with silence. > > Echoing Randell Jesup, I ask: what is an AREXX: device? If you can provide > a useful spec, I'll consider writing it. Note that it would be trivial > to define a DOS handler to invoke AREXX, but what would you gain? Isolation and modularity. > If you > called it synchronously, you'd lose the ability to have the REXX program > send commands to your application (since it would be WAITing the reply.) You could send commands to REXX from programs that haven't been set up to deal with REXX. > And if you intend to use it asynchronously, what's wrong with the present > message-passing interface? Could you talk effectively to Intuition through > an INTUITION: handler? I already do. It's called CON:. You did a clone of it... don't you remember? One of the items on my stack of things to do when I have time is a CON: type handler that provides ANSI-style escape sequences to do things like: Menus. Function keys. Graphics (probably based on DEC Regis graphics). Changing the title bar. Adding a close box (that sends ^C). Scroll bars like the Bridge Card software's windows. And with a clipboard interface. That's the sort of thing that a CON: device needs. > I hope that you can be persuaded to give AREXX a try. From what you've > shown of Browser, it sounds like adding an AREXX interface to it would > be MIT**, and you'd end up with a fully-programmable file browser/launcher/ > whatever, and you'd be able to talk to the other AREXX host programs. I may do it. But I'm not sure that it'll do what I want. Have you seen what I'm planning for Browser? -- -- a clone of Peter (have you hugged your wolf today) da Silva `-_-' -- normally ...!hoptoad!academ!uhnix1!sugar!peter U -- Disclaimer: These aren't mere opinions... these are *values*.