Re: XyWin follow-up question

[Stephen Moore essmo@xxxxxxxx]

On Mon, 10 Aug 1998, R Tennenbaum wrote:

> As a more general inquiry, since many of us will no doubt be facing
> similar situations in the next few years, it would be great if someone
> -- from TTG even? -- could explain how it is that a Win16 program will
> still be able to work where DOS will not. This is hardly germane to
> your inquiry, Timothy, but enquiring minds want to know.

The magic phrase here is "function calls." Apps communicate with the
underlying operating system (or directly to the BIOS in many older
DOS apps) by making appropriate invocations to prewritten routines,
which together comprise the Application Program Interface, or API.
(Sound familiar to you XPL-ers out there?) Even "the DOS prompt"
is a program, COMMAND.COM, that mediates between user input and
the underlying OS function calls.

"The disappearance of DOS" is a handy buzz phrase most likely
referring to the COMMAND.COM shell. My prediction is that the
underlying function calls will be around considerably longer,
and as long as they're there, Win16 apps can run under Win32.
(That's why the window controls for a Win 3.x app magically
change from arrows to line-box-X when it's run under Win 95.)
These function calls will stick around in tiny part to support
legacy apps, but mainly to service the exigencies of getting new
OS code out the door in "timely" fashion. (Win 2000, anyone?)

Stephen Moore