Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!cornell!rochester!udel!mmdf From: cmcmanis%pepper@UDEL.EDU Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: ARexx question Message-ID: <4440@louie.udel.EDU> Date: 3 Oct 88 22:31:14 GMT Sender: mmdf@udel.EDU Lines: 65 Received: from CUNYVM by CUNYVM.BITNET (Mailer X2.00) with BSMTP id 7734; Sat, 01 Oct 88 00:40:04 EDT Received: from UDEL.EDU by CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (IBM VM SMTP R1.1) with TCP; Sat, 01 Oct 88 00:39:58 EDT Received: from Louie.UDEL.EDU by Louie.UDEL.EDU id ac17521; 30 Sep 88 20:58 EDT Received: by Louie.UDEL.EDU id ad17361; 30 Sep 88 20:48 EDT Received: from USENET by Louie.UDEL.EDU id aa17019; 30 Sep 88 20:21 EDT From: Chuck McManis Subject: Re: ARexx question Message-ID: <71155@sun.uucp> Date: 30 Sep 88 22:42:32 GMT Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View To: amiga-relay@UDEL.EDU Sender: amiga-relay-request@UDEL.EDU In article <8759@watdragon.waterloo.edu> (Blair MacIntyre) writes: >Time for the stupid question of the century: > What exactly is it the point of having an ARexx port in a program? >Blair Not really a stupid question, having an ARexx port is like having multitasking, you can't really think why you need it until you have it and then you can't understand why it took you so long to figure out that you did need it. An ARexx port is a remote control, done right it offers complete control of the program from ARexx. It is this aspect of it that causes some people to think of ARexx as a glorified Macro package, the difference is that ARexx is much smarter than your average macro package and indeed may only be the messenger for even higher intelligence :-). Of course the best way to explain something is to start with an example that is close to home, text editing. TxED+ is a text editor that has full control of the editor available through the ARexx port. TxED is a nice "programmers" editor because the commands are simple and don't get in your way, and the executable is small so you can have it around all of the time. Now let's suppose you are writing a letter or something and find your self making lots of little changes to a paragraph. Since TxED has no justification features you find yourself going back, adding and removing carrige returns, to keep the paragraph in a semblance of reasonableness. With ARexx however, you can automate this process with a simple macro that "clips" the selected region, does the justification, and then "pastes" the result back into your buffer. Further, TxED lets you attach ARexx programs to Menu items so now you can add a menu item "justify" that becomes part of the editing environment. Now this is not more than any particular macro package can do either. Except that what if MicroEMACS takes the same basic commands as TxED+ ? If so you paragraph justification program will work equally well on **both* editors. Big deal, you might think so you establish some defacto standards and a bunch of editors can share macros. And you're right it isn't much of a big deal (but it's a start). No the real power becomes evident when the thing on the other end of your ARexx program *isn't* ARrexx. You can add another program into the loop. Consider TeX the text formatter that Radical Eye Software sells. Now instead of selecting a region in TxED+ and selecting "justify" you identify the region and select "typeset". Suddenly a screen jumps to the front and your text is displayed, fully justified with all the various margins and such set. Now you have *leveraged* TxED by giving it typesetting abilities thru TeX. Now how much would you pay ? [just kidding]. Now let's bring it closer to home, what about a compiler that has a ARexx port? Now you