ZZ>
  >                                            Even if they became interested,
  > chances are the Pascal dialect would be non-standard.
ZZ>

  Interesting that you say that.  A lot of the Borland PASCAL users that
  comment on the subject usually bemoan that lack of Borland's
  extensions in other PASCAL compilers.

ZZ>
  > Borland Pascal specifies a syntax for Borland's own Object Model which uses
  > VIRTUAL/STATIC/DYNAMIC methods, PUBLIC/PRIVATE attributes, and INHERITED
  > Objects.  Borland's Turbo Assembler 3.2 implements compatible Objects too.
ZZ>

  Well, it looks like the language has the syntax.  So the big question
  is whether anyone will come along and tweak the compiler so that it
  generates the code at the other end to call the SOM runtime instead of
  its own.

  Maybe someone could get those folks at SPEED386, or the blokes at C'T
  in Germany with their BP7 patch interested in such a modification.

  I have no idea what any of the five commercial PASCAL compiler vendors
  that I've heard of (Microway, Clarion, Cabot, Metaware, and Prospero)
  think on the subject.  It's hard enough keeping track of the C++
  compilers, and that's with a language that I use.  (-:

ZZ>
  > So basically, I need to know the latest details about the OS/2 version 3.0
  > SOM.
ZZ>

  What exactly do you want to know, and at what level ?

  A good guide to SOM programming is Christina Lau's book, _Object_Oriented_
  _Programming_using_SOM_and_DSOM_ (ISBN 0-442-01948-3).

  There are also the reference books that accompany the SOMObjects
  Developers' Toolkit (although they are a bit dense, extremely badly
  organised, and tend to gloss over the hard parts).

  However, most of the publically available documentation is, naturally,
  geared towards the programmer using SOM, rather than the compiler
  vendor attempting to set their products up to use SOM.  It could
  probably be done from the information in the SOMObjects Developers'
  Toolkit manuals, which do document most of the API for the SOM
  runtime, but their tendency to gloss over "implementation details"
  could make it quite hard work.

  I wouldn't want to discourage anyone from creating a SOM-enabled
  PASCAL compiler.  The more, the merrier, in my book.  I just want to
  make it clear that it is not a trivial exercise, and needs to be
  approached well-armed.

ZZ>
  >                              It is supposed to describe SOM, Workplace Shel
  > classes and methods, and how to create object-oriented applications for the
  > OS/2 desktop.
ZZ>

  There are two different areas here.  You can build extensions to the
  Workplace Shell, which involves writing new SOM classes that are
  derived from WPObject (linking them into a DLL) and then telling
  Workplace Shell to use them.  You can also build applications that use
  SOM for whatever purpose that you like.

  The former gives you new classes of objects on the desktop.  There are
  a lot of methods in WPS objects that help them intercommunicate and
  keep the whole thing afloat.  As you, I don't have any references for
  the subject.  But the IDL descriptions of WPS classes are available on
  the DevCon CD-ROMs and in the SOMObjects Developers' Toolkit.

  For the latter you simply have to ask yourself what you want to do.
  Object orientation via SOM isn't an end in itself, just another tool
  to be used.  I use SOM in some of my projects for various reasons.  In
  one, for example, I need to keep development on several groups of
  classes decoupled as much as possible from the code that is using
  those classes.

ZZ>
  >                Currently, I have old documentation from the Internet
  > describing the SOM for OS/2 version 2.1 which has surely changed by now.
ZZ>

  A lot of things have changed in the move from SOM 1.x to SOM 2.x.  The
  most obvious change is that SOM 2 now uses CORBA IDL, instead of the
  old OIDL.  There are a whole load of class libraries to support
  persistence, replication, and distribution of classes and instances.
  There are also a fair few modifications to the underlying run-time
  (SOM 2 code will not work on a SOM 1 runtime).

  > JdeBP <
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