Subj : Re: Best Package for Windows?
To   : SHANNON TALLEY
From : William McBrine
Date : Mon Oct 30 2000 10:06 pm

-=> SHANNON TALLEY wrote to ALL <=-

 ST> reader made for windows (specifically windows/not DOS ported to
 ST> Windows)

Sorry, this won't answer your question; but I just have to comment on the 
above. I don't object to your request -- only your wording. I think you mean 
GUI vs. console mode. This is a pet peeve a mine -- a console-mode program _is_ 
still a "Windows" program; it's just not GUI. Most OSes support both types of 
programs; and Windows (once you get past the 16-bit versions) is no exception. 
But only in Windows are console apps regarded as second-class citizens -- as 
something less than "real" Windows programs.

When I first released a native Win32 port of MultiMail, it was sometimes 
accused of being "really a DOS program" -- or, as you put it, "DOS ported to 
Windows". Both descriptions are false. MultiMail is a Linux program, ported to 
generic Unix, DOS, OS/2, and Windows, in that order. :-)

I suppose some of the confusion arises from the fact that DOS programs and 
Windows console-mode programs run in the same shell, which is unfortunately 
labelled with a big fat "MS-DOS" icon (even in NT, where the icon points to 
something quite different). But MS-DOS apps and Win32 console apps aren't the 
same, internally. They don't work in the same way, and don't have the same 
capabilities. Granted, the differences are more obvious to a programmer than to 
an end-user... The distinction between native console apps and DOS programs is 
clearer in OS/2, partly because they use separate shells. (And in Unix, you 
can't even run DOS programs without invoking a special emulator.)

BTW, to Jim: I was just looking at the Offline Readers page, and I noticed that 
although you have OS/2 programs divided into "PM" and "text", there's no 
similar division for Windows -- only 3.1 vs. 9x vs. NT -- even though some of 
the Windows programs listed are console apps. Personally, I'd be inclined to 
combine the 9x and NT categories (are there really any that work in one and not 
the other?), and then split the combined group into console and GUI. At least 
then I might not get as many of those "it's really a DOS program" flames. ;-)

.... Got my tie caught in the fax... Suddenly I was in L.A.
--- MultiMail/Linux v0.38
 * Origin: COMM Port OS/2 juge.com 204.89.247.1 (281) 980-9671 (1:106/2000)

.