Hi Dave--

    I decided that I had better move into the modern (GUI) age, so I
tried building the tutorial examples in the Visual PL/I manual.  Finally
got everything to work more or less as per manual, but some of the
modifications I tried were ignored.  I'm not sure why I am torturing
myself by learning how to write utilities I'll never use, but I deal
with a magazine editor I respect who doesn't want any more text-mode
applications, who gave me a "review" copy of VisPro Rexx 3.0 Gold to
play with, and who claims he would love a review of Visual PL/I "for old
times' sake!"  What one goes through for one's art!  It's a good thing I
don't have to live off of the returns from my writing!

    The experiment raised questions:

    The default .MAK file (built by the system) uses LINK386 and a
5,000,000-byte stack.  It also insists on linking with /CO.  Is circa
5MB a reasonable stack size for PM programs?  Following a mentor's
example, my "normal" stack for PL/I text-mode programs is 2MB
(0x200000).  I changed the stack value in the VPLI "compile and link"
settings page to "0x300000" as a compromise.  I suppose it doesn't
really matter, since never-used mainthread stack space, although
committed, will never get into real memory.  I also deleted the /CO
linker switch because I never learned how to use a source-code debugger.

    I got the thing to link with ILINK but had to put in the
NOFReeformat switch.  I even tried adding ".LIB" to the two default
library names (CEELINK and IBMLINK) while in FReeformat (default ILINK)
mode, but kept getting an NMAKE error 20, whatever that is.  (No NMAKE
error list in the [expletive deleted] TOOLS.INF file for WarpTlkt!)  Is
there any other way to influence the MAK file built by Visual PL/I
(besides editing the MAK file before finishing the build) than the
changes one can make on this notebook settings page?

    There are two top-left icons in the "Objects Toolbox" title bar. The
rightmost one has a diagonal line, normally.  When clicked on, it
changes to another figure that is too small for my tired eyes to make
out, but seems to do nothing else.  I couldn't find anything in the
manual, or the HELP files, that explains this.  Any words of wisdom?

    There doesn't seem to be any way to reset the *PROCESS defaults used
by VPLI.  It insists on MARGINS(1, 100), and produces the source-code
file to suit.  Somewhere, in some README, I thought I read that the left
MARGINS parameter could not be less than 2.  Oh well, the tutorial case
compiles, links, and runs--even though it doesn't do anything useful.

    For the multithreaded tutorial case, when I searched the .PLI
source-code file, I found the ATTACH.  But no STOP/WAIT nor DETACH.
Seems the thread kills itself when it is done, using a "WinTerminate"
command.  I suppose one can have text-mode threads issue their own END
commands if they know when they are finished.  (Supposition:  In this
case, the main thread uses WAIT, before DETACHing the thread to release
its resources.  Is supposition correct?)

    Somehow, as someone who hasn't earned his living by programming
since 1954, I tend to resent the assumptions made by programming tools
that disagree with what I would have assumed if I were building the app
from scratch.  However, I suppose a professional developer must accept
the loss of control in favor of the time gained.  Most certainly, even I
wouldn't bother with a PM app without a builder program.

    Thanks for putting up with my ignorance.  Learning new tricks is
hard work for us ancient dogs.

          --Murray

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 * MR/2 2.26 * Never send a PM program to do a character-mode job
                                                      
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