On Friday, 96/11/29, Leslie Rhorer wrote to David Noon about "Named
Pipes" as follows:

LR>         Do you think it is possible CALL ABSOLUTE works better under PBasic?

Hi Les,

If the Power BASIC syntax for CALL ABSOLUTE is compatible with QBASIC
it will be dreadful too. I had quite forgotten how bad that interface
was.

LR>  DN> I'll send you the assembler source for the subroutine library, C
LR>  DN> source for the sample DOS program to be activated, and C
source [unless
LR>  DN> you'd prefer PL/I] for an OS/2 program to build the semaphore and then
LR>  DN> activate the DOS program.
LR> 
LR>         When you say "activate", you mean just pass the 
LR> semaphore, right?  The OS/2 code shouldn't be spawning a 
LR> child process.

This is correct. The DOS program can be started by whatever means you
want, it will sit there waiting on the event semaphore "inactive".
When the DMPLAYER.EXE posts the event semaphore the DOS program will be
"activated". Any other program that has an interest in the event will
pick up the post too, so it can be used to activate any number of
programs.

LR>  DN> You should be able to place the semaphore
LR>  DN> requests anywhere you need them in your Power BASIC code, since the
LR>  DN> assembler subroutines are coded using the Pascal linkage convention,
LR>  DN> which is prettty much the lowest common denominator of such
things; you
LR>  DN> can even in-line the assembler code, I suppose.
LR> 
LR>         'Should be pretty trivial.

Hopefully you've received the source code for the VDM utility
functions, so you'll have a fair idea of what is needed to update your
Power BASIC program. You'll need to open the event semaphore (if that
fails, create it), wait on it and then close it -- a total of 3 calls.

The DMPLAYER program will receive its extra 4 or 5 lines of code
tomorrow (8th Dec) and I'll send it either tomorrow or Monday. Only
the foreground thread should be affected, as near as I can tell at the
moment.

Regards

Dave
                                              

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