JVE>
   >  How hard is it to write a program for OS2 compared to Windows ?
JVE>

   In some ways it's the same (Windows and OS/2 PM both use messages,
   message loops, window procedures and so forth), and in others it is
   actually easier to write an OS/2 program than it is a Windows program.

   Some examples :

   Unlike Windows, with its `WinMain's and instance handles, there's not a
   strong source-code distinction between a text-mode OS/2 program and an
   OS/2 program that uses Presentation Manager.  One writes a Standard C
   `main' function for both.

   Also unlike Windows, with OS/2 there's no need to "unlearn" anything
   that you have learned when writing text-mode programs when you come to
   start writing Presentation Manager programs.  The system API and memory
   layout for both are exactly the same.  PM programs even have standard
   input and output just like text-mode programs do (and cunning PM
   programmers can find this quite useful).

   The Presentation Manager API is also significantly more regular than
   the Windows API.  It doesn't intrude half as much into your program's
   namespace as the Windows API does (all PM API calls begin with a
   prefix, such as "Win..." or "Gpi...").

   Presentation Manager also works in a more consistent manner than
   Windows does.

   Whereas Windows has a peculiar distinction between stuff that works
   with client areas and stuff that does not, the frame widgets in PM are
   controls just like buttons and entryfields, and respond to messages and
   style flags just as any other controls.  They can even be used on their
   own.

   Whereas Windows, because of an arbitrary distinction between top-level
   and non-top-level windows, is unable to do things like have a frame
   window as a child of another frame window without you having to jump
   through all sorts of hoops to make it work (and even then you cannot
   put a menu on the child frame), with PM, which makes no such arbitrary
   distinction, you can just *do* things like that, and they work straight
   off.  A multiple document interface (MDI) is *much* easier to produce
   in Presentation Manager than it is in Windows.

   Whereas it is rather complex in Windows to write an application with
   multiple non-modal dialogues (the IsDialogMessage processing in the
   message loop becomes rather messy), in Presentation Manager it is no
   more complicated than an application with only one dialogue (dialogue
   processing isn't handled in the message loop in Presentation Manager --
   so no IsDialogMessage required).

   > JdeBP <
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