From: Ellen K. 

Yow, if they removed API's all kinds of existing apps wouldn't run on
Longhorn and its successors.   I can't imagine it.

On Mon, 20 Oct 2003 17:22:26 -0700, Randall Parker
 wrote in message
:

>Can Rich or someone else tell us what the likely future is for various
>Win32 APIs? My guess is that .NET will have fewer calls than Win32 but
>that all (or at least 99% of them) of the Win32 calls will continue to
>be there. I can't imagine an OS vendor pulling large numbers of calls
>out of an OS.
>
>Elsewhere I'm arguing that there is no way MS is going to remove API
>calls from the next version of Windows - at least not a large number.
>But the advocates of the idea that Win32 APis are going to get yanked in
>mass numbers are quoting these pages:
>
>
>     http://msdn.microsoft.com/chats/vstudio/vstudio_121802.asp
>
>     Q: Can you clarify the distiction between the WinForm API and the
>future
>porting of Win32 to run as a managed API?
>
>     A: The "Windows Forms" API is essentially a set of interfaces that
>expose the existing Win32 functionality via managed code. In the future, you
>will see the API for developing applications on Windows will evolve into a
>fully managed API.
>
>
>Here is a press release regarding some of Microsoft's plans for Longhorn:
>
>     http://www.develop4.net/news.html
>
>     First, the software giant aims to slash the number of API calls in the
>Win32 API set from more than 70,000 to fewer than 10,000 to help developers
>better exploit the next-generation Windows shell, user interface (code-named
>Aero) and .Net framework components in Longhorn, according to sources
>familiar with the Longhorn plans.
>
>     "Win32 has like 76,000 APIs, and they're taking it down to 8,000 with
>Longhorn technology," said one source familiar with the plans.
>
>     ...
>
>     Also in Longhorn, Microsoft plans to integrate a replacement for the
>Windows graphics device interface (GDI), code-named Avalon...
>
>
>
>According to Eric Rudder, Senior Vice President of Developer and Platform
>Evangelism at Microsoft (and reiterated by Thomas Scheidegger, Microsoft's
>.NET MVP):
>
>     http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/ericr/02-11vslive.asp
>
>     You'll see new UI tools and designers to take advantage of the new
>presentation system of "Longhorn." We'll leverage some new
storage features
>of "Longhorn." And really if you think about where we're going with
>"Longhorn" it's really the next evolution of the Windows
platform API. So
>you can think about Win 16 to Win 32 to really a managed platform where all
>the interfaces in Windows are managed.

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