Hi folks,

With the recent chat here about writing programs to be executable under both DOS and OS/2, I have blown the dust off a project I first developed about 4 years ago.

It is a library of subroutines and functions that are DOS object code, but perform the functions of various OS/2 APIs and allow the use of the same names as used under OS/2. At present I have wrapped the OS/2 API calls for most of DOSFILEMGR, almost all of DOSSEMAPHORES and almost all of DOSNMPIPES. That's about as much of the base API that can be exploited in a VDM, since DOS is not as rich a programming environment as native OS/2.

Some of the functions can only be executed within a VDM under OS/2, not under real DOS. However, many of the more commonplace functions will work equally well in real mode DOS.

What I am trying to achieve is source-code compatibility between 16-bit DOS and
32-bit OS/2. While most of the OS/2 interfaces are going through the 16-bit API, all the API names match the 32-bit API and the parameter lists have been adjusted to match (more or less) the 32-bit calls, too. This means that this library is not FAPI.

I need people to "destruction test" this library before I inflict it on the OS/2 world at large. You will need a compiler or assembler that produces DOS object code. The ideal tool is Watcom C/C++ but, like the OS/2 API, this library is language-neutral. I especially want Pascal programmers who are prepared to write function declarations suitable to the more widely used DOS compilers.

If you are interested, e-mail me at dwnoon@os2bbs.com and I will send you the source code.

If the feedback is positive, I will port the Kbd...(), Mou...() and Vio...() API calls, too.

Regards

Dave
<Team PL/I>

--- FleetStreet 1.25.1
* Origin: My other computer is an IBM S/390 (2:257/609.5)