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From: navas@cory.Berkeley.EDU (David C. Navas)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Stability of Commodore/Amiga
Keywords: Amiga, OS/2, DOS
Message-ID: <22757@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 7 Mar 90 20:28:06 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>
Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU
Reply-To: navas@cory.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (David C. Navas)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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In article <10016@cbmvax.commodore.com> ken@cbmvax (Ken Farinsky - CATS) writes:
>In article <49055ed8.1a5bf@moth.engin.umich.edu> chrisl@caen.engin.umich.edu (Chris Lang) writes:
>>
>>...the
>>fact remains that I can write a program in 15 minutes for OS/2 to do basic
>>windowing with some very powerful capabilities...the same program on the
>>Amiga could take (???).
>
>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?

Hmm, well I have no information about OS/2 besides having seen the voluminous
manuals.  Here is what I *need* in order to build a reasonable program:

1) An integrated compiler environment -- integrated via ARexx would be nice.
2) A 'C' interpretor would be nice, lacking that I want a well written
	debugger with real-time updates of values/memory accessed [particularly
	low-memory].  One of the hardest bugs I ever had to find was one where
	I wrote *one-byte*!! past allocated memory -- which didn't cause a
	failure until much later...
3) Some kind of menu wrapping functions.  Right now the stuff is too complicated.
	Right now, barring Gadgets, Menus are *the* hardest thing to code, in my
	opinion.  Even some of the examples aren't written strictly to design
	criteria.  I want to be able to say: Add this text under this menu header,
	have the operating system stick it in, verifying length and width criteria
	of the screen, and have my code *called* when the menu is selected.  Much
	like the new stuff in 1.4
4) Access to window rendering functions and menu-rendering functions so that I can pretty things up.

I guess in the end I want to be able to do is this:
	default = OpenWindow(NULL);
	MenuHeaderAdd(default, "Print");
	MenuItemAdd(default, "Print", "HelloWorld", myfunctionptr);

	myfunctionptr()
	{
	   WriteWindow(default, "Hello World");
	}

	And have the right things happen -- even if memory was low and something wasn't
	allocated correctly -- system error check for NULL would save me, the programmer,
	a lot of headaches.

>
>Try not to Flame (too much), hard information is what I am looking for.
>Please be brief.
>
>-- 
>--------------------------------------------------------------
>Ken Farinsky -- CATS               Commodore Business Machines
>PHONE 215-431-9421         UUCP  ...{uunet,rutgers}!cbmvax!ken
>--------------------------------------------------------------


David Navas                                   navas@cory.berkeley.edu
"Think you can, think you can't -- either way it's true."  Henry Ford