* Original Area: OS2
* Original To  : Rafal Wiosna (1:259/400)


 PF> What is it?  A native OS/2 implementation of the Win32 api.

 rw>         Is it Plug'n'play (install'n'recompile?)? Will 
 rw> Win95 specific apps port to OS/2 nicely?

It can be (it was for me).  Things to consider:

 1) You'll probably be switching compilers (IBM's is the only one
    officially supported (in the beta anyway),  but I managed to
    use Watcom 10.0 too).  Switching compilers,  particularly for
    those weaned on Borland,  can be quite a job in itself.

 2) This is a 32bit-only environment -- it is not for porting 16bit
    Windows apps.

 3) OLE is not supported.

 4) Proprietary Windows class libraries are,  of course,  not part of
    the API (if you were fooled into using OWL or MFC,  you're stuck
    (and stupid !))

 5) "80% of the win32 API that programmers use the most" is supported
    (when I use the term "win32" it is in a general sense,  I am not
    going to bother to figure out MS's flavour-o-the-day win32s, win32c,
    etc, api).   

 6) The parts of the API not supported you have to code yourself,  using
    real OS/2 calls.  In my particular case (a 148000 line pgm),  I had
    to only code 4 (easy!) functions -- after I disabled a few things
    (like printing :-( -- the windows spooling APIs aren't in there
    yet).  There was also one flag that was not supported
    (WS_EX_TRANSPARENT)


 6b) You can not mix DAPIE(win32) and OS/2 code in the same *.c file (this
     is due to collisions that occur with the header files).

     What you do is pass the DAPIE HWND/HDC to a function in another *.c
     file, which can then use the HWND to call real OS/2 Win/Gpi calls.



--- Maximus/2 3.00