#ARexx tutorial
12 messages in this thread
Just read transcript of your ARexx conference last year. I bought your
package, but I could really use sthg like the tutorial-oriented manual you
referred to. Can you tell us anything more about that project?
Don
Don,
I'll second that!
Rich
I'll third that!
— Ethan
I'm delighted to hear, then, that I'm not the only one awaiting an
Amiga-oriented ARexx tutorial. Let's hear it from the rest of you who also
feel the need!! We've had a second, a third. Now, a forth (sic)? a….?
Bill, you still here?!
There are two Prentice-Hall books on REXX:
M.F.Cowlishaw, The Rexx Language: A Practical Approach to Programming
(MFC is the author of Rexx at IBM)
O'Hara & Gomber, Modern Programming Using Rexx (with some reference to
installation Personal Rexx on IBM PC)
fifth that… -(and I've used the two books mentioned…)
I, sixth, would welcom an Amiga oriented ARexx tutorial.
//jv
I think the main problem with the ARexx manual is it attempts to
explain ARexx by telling you how it works internally, how Bill Hawes
programmed it. What most programmers want is something that tells you how
to use it. I don't know of too many books which purport to explain C
programming telling you how the compiler handles all the variable names!
I appreciate your comments regarding an ARexx tutorial book, as a number of
other users have also requested more introductory material. With the
adoption of ARexx in 1.4 I suspect that there will be a number of tutorial
books available in the not-too-distant future.
At the present time I'm too busy trying to run the business and still keep
improving my existing software products to devote time to producing a
tutorial; anyway, some of the professional writers could probably do a
better job at it.
Bill, I think that some small changes to the docs, if you could find time
for it, would make a big difference. In the first few chapters, when you talk
about the structure of the language, you should move all references to the way
your program actually WORKS to a later chapter entitled "Technical Reference".
Just leave basic information, like "a variable, lets say "myvar", will be equal
to itself capitalized until it is assigned a variable". Each program has its
own variable list. When you start talking about memory allocation for variable
pools, most people, including myself, find themselves reading the text again
and again.
— Ethan
P.S. This is in no way a knock of your product. In fact, it has one other
feature over iconx for WorkBench users: it doesn't require that a window pop up
on the screen!
Thanks for your reply. The 1.4 is great news. I guess you're right
about the likelihood of more popular stuff on AREXX appearing in the
not-too-distant (hopefully!) future. Best of luck with your own work!
Having spent a week carefully reading the ARexx manual, and trying my best to
study the examples on the disk — i vote YES YES YES for an ARexx tutorial that
takesx us non-programmers through its capabilities a step at a time, like many
of the Basic tutorial books do.
Ray,
Glad to learn you share my interest.
I hope Bill Hawes is right when he speculates that if Arexx is included in DOS
1.4, popular articles and books are bound to appear. I would think the Abacus
or Compute series might be natural places for such a book.
Perhaps AMAZING COMPUTING could run a series of articles– as they have on
Lisp, Forth, C….Perhaps a class on Arexx could be offered here on CIS with
lecture notes and class transcripts available for downloading. These could
form the backbone of a neat little book the instructor could publish.