Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!umich!caen.engin.umich.edu!chrisl
From: chrisl@caen.engin.umich.edu (Chris Lang)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Stability of Commodore/Amiga
Keywords: Amiga, OS/2, DOS
Message-ID: <490a73f0.db93@edsel.engin.umich.edu>
Date: 6 Mar 90 05:00:00 GMT
References: <476087196@deimos.cis.ksu.edu> <19000039@attcc.UUCP> <2840@mtuni.ATT.COM> <676@xdos.UUCP> <3881@nmtsun.nmt.edu> <48ffd21f.db93@edsel.engin.umich.edu> <3883@nmtsun.nmt.edu> <49055ed8.1a5bf@moth.engin.umich.edu> <10016@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Reply-To: chrisl@caen.engin.umich.edu (Chris Lang)
Organization: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Lines: 44

In article <10016@cbmvax.commodore.com> ken@cbmvax (Ken Farinsky - CATS) writes:
>How about a bit more information!  What are these "powerful capabilities"
>that you get from OS/2 in 15 minutes?  What would you need on the Amiga
>to do the same thing?
>
>Try not to Flame (too much), hard information is what I am looking for.
>Please be brief.

OK, to give a simple example, in 15 minutes I could open up a window that will
automatically iconify itself or expand to fill the entire screen (standard
PM frame controls).  I could then create a number of child windows, each of
which is a fully-functional frame window that can iconify as well.  In fact,
if I iconify the children, their icons will appear in the parent's client area,
rather like a desktop-within-a-desktop.  (Similar to Workbench, only it can
happen automatically for any parent-child window combination.)  Then I'd
define a menu that lists each window, that when chosen would send a message
to the proper child and make it paint itself a nice big Boing! ball...  (OK,
so the last would take longer than 15 minutes, unless I'd already defined it
as a bitmap on disk, in which case it would take just a couple of lines of 
code.)

The parts of this admittedly silly scenario that display OS/2's advantages are
basically the fact that I can have fully-functional child windows automatically,
install and act on menus with incredible ease, and send messages among windows
with a single function call.

Having said all that, let me say that, given a choice between OS/2 and AmigaDOS,
I would pick AmigaDOS every time.  OS/2 makes things SO easy one occasionally
gets the feeling that Microsoft and IBM think developers haven't the slightest
amount of originality and that Horrible Things will happen if they are given
any lower-level access to the system.

Disclaimer: I have never seen 1.4.  I imagine that many of the things I just
mentioned will be much easier and even more powerful than they are now, and
I certainly hope that is the case.

 -Chris
----- 
Chris Lang    University of Michigan, College of Engineering
home: 4622 Bursley             work: National Center for Manufacturing Sciences
      Ann Arbor, MI  48109           900 Victors Way, Suite 226
      (313) 763-1832                 Ann Arbor, MI  48108
chrisl@caen.engin.umich.edu          (313) 995-0300
"I hate quotations.  Tell me what you know."  - Ralph Waldo Emerson