#OS/2 REXX vs ARexx
9 messages in this thread
Bill, IBM has finally announced REXX for OS/2. It's part of the Extended
Edition Ver 1.2 release due out in November. We got an early copy of it last
week and as soon as we can find an underused system, we'll load it and then we
can see how much memory the IBM REXX requires.
My bet says at least 100K.
Geo
I think 100K is way under estimated (IMHO) – let me know what it turns out to
be. Marlene
Marlene, you're probably right about OS/2 REXX being larger than 100K, but
we'll find out for sure. Hmmm, maybe we could start a pool?
Geo
George,
I believe the DOS version of REXX took about 125-135K, so the OS/WHO
version will probably be more than that.
Lloyd
George,
I'd like very much to hear your impressions of REXX under OS/2. IBM is very
close-mouthed about their development, so I haven't heard anything about the
new version. I'm particularly interested in any extensions that have been
added and about the changes to support multitasking operations.
ANy wagers as to how long it will take the OS/2 market to have as many
thirdparty applications supporting REXX as there are on the Amiga? 🙂
-Bill Hawes
Bill, maybe OS/2 Rexx / ARexx is going to be the ticket for hybrid Janusware.
Hybrid Janusware? That's an interesting term … but has anybody been able to
run OS/2 on a bridgeboard? I thought you needed a 386 and about 10 megs of
memory to run OS/2.
I have had some inquiries about talking to bridgeboard applications via ARexx,
so maybe a Janus-library to OS/2 connection would provide a way.
Bill
The crippling thing about OS/2 is that it is designed to run on the 80286. If
you hadn't heard, the problem with the '286 is that once you switch it out of
privileged mode (where you can address all the memory), there's no way to
switch it back. So OS/2 on the '286 works by powering the CPU down several
times a second and then powering it right back up. Neat, huh? So it should be
possible to run OS/2 on the AT Bridge. One would probably ont oops not want to
run any applications on an 8 mHz AT under OS/2 since the graphics etc would
turn your performance to sludge, but if one thinks about OS/2 as a place to put
filters? So that Amiware could pass stuff to OS/2 functions for pattern
matching, tail finding, etc., those might live in OS/2 (286) quite nicely. One
does not need _any_ window open to get use from the AT. Jobs can be running
there completely invisible, and simply putting their output onto Ami-accessable
directories from time to time as they finish.
IBM published their "standard" REXX specs in their SAA "Procedure Language"
manual. Off hand, I don't recall any specific extensions for interprocess
communications. I'll have to re-check that manual.
Geo