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ecs 2.2
Ben:
--- Quote from: Daniel Caetano on November 14, 2013, 12:48:18 pm ---Well,
Let´s try something constructive, based on my personal perspective.
I am a developer, with good OS/2 PM and OO programming background, but I have never been able to build a single working WPS Class. The real question here is: why?
*snip!*...
Sorry if I am asking too much, but we are at a draw. Most core-OS/2 developers are already commited to important life-support OS/2 development - and I believe this is the best they can do to help OS/2 platform; if the community can benefit from WPS development, this should be done by those who are not actively programming for OS/2, but are able to do so. This "let´s do some WPS programming tutorial" would be, IMHO, a great step into this direction.
My kindest regards,
Daniel Caetano
--- End quote ---
Daniel, I think of your post as being a step in the right direction, but the problem is in unifying the others out there like you who have something to contribute and are willing, yet do not possess all that is required to act independently.
Scattered amongst the OS/2 community, are people with skills, (some partial), that they take from their professional lives, or have developed, (albeit incompletely), on their own; the OS/2 community tends to have more intelligent, skilled and able users on the average, as compared with other OS communities.
But, taking these jigsaw pieces and putting them together into something practical, is the obstacle as I see it at present. There are other, more qualified, people but, as was said, they are already maximized and cannot be spared from their present commitments.
Martin is attempting to solve this problem and provide the necessaries to attract those scattered people and at least get the ball rolling! Once the right number of people have pulled together and become familiar with each other and strengthen the knowledge base that Martin has started, I cannot see why more would not come of it.
But, people have short attention spans and are easily distracted from the topic... as this thread demonstrates in a real-life, living-example, as the messages pass through a barrage of segues like Retilin-riddled Music Video watchers, their fodder being filled with flash and shattered sequences, but containing little of substance or depth.
Or, (if you'd rather), like a drunken archer with poor eyesight who can no longer hit the target.
It is not a wonder then, that nothing gets accomplished in this forum... despite the best intentions of a coherent few.
Yet, if those coherent few did not take the effort and were not coherent, there would be no puddle for the video watchers to splash in.
Maybe a few others like yourself who would rather not see the demise of OS/2 and can wade through the segues of this thread, will take this opportunity to present themselves then Martin's efforts and your offer, will not have been for naught.
Martin Iturbide:
Hi Daniel
I understand your worries about WPS. I had been collecting all information I can find out it on EDM/2. Please also notice that I had found a formal procedure for IBM to give me permission to repost material on this Wiki.
There is a work left to review and rewrite (which is legal to create derivative work) some article from the EDM/2 wiki. I'm not an OS/2 developer but I'm starting to read about it.
I think we need to document more, provide examples, (or rewrite already created examples). Possible trying to make a tutorial of the "car" WPS example updated as today, with the old sc.exe compiler (required for SOM/WPS) and possible a newer GCC or OpenWatcom.
I'm starting reading "WPS Programming the Easy Way by Frank Matthijs" but I'm noticing that since it was on wrote on 1994 it is not using the latest "terms" about WPS programming. But I want to give it a try.
Regards
Andi B.:
Although off topic I want to add to Daniels post -
he pointed out the problem about non-existent and if existent than much to often wrong information material. Moreover we have to struggle with outdated closed source and buggy software tools for building WPS extensions/classes.
Remember the different rc versions we have and every one has different quirks. Don't want to know what problems you run into when stressing the som compiler. ICC3.08/3.65 which we use to build xwp misses some newer c/c++ extensions we are used to use with other tool chains. Nmake sometimes does not honor all environment settings it should and even worse eats up some OS/2 resources (maybe in collaboration with RC and ICC and SOM....) that forces you to reboot every 10-20th compilation process. Even our best programmers editor VisualSlick Edit is more than 10 years outdated and you're running into nice troubles with todays big projects.
And these tools are all closed source so we can not repair them. You have to have some masochism to wast your spare time with such tools.
Given that and the fact that only a handful developers are out there who can give and are willing to give help in the few newsgroups which are still alive you hardly can attract new programmers to our platform. Especially not the young ones.
How to change the situation? I don't know. But fear it needs more than a few individuals even if they are willing to invest a lot of their time.
Sigurd Fastenrath:
--- Quote from: Doug Bissett on November 14, 2013, 06:22:17 pm ---
--- Quote ---In my opinion it was the wrong decision not to concentrate on selected hardware.
--- End quote ---
That is a two way street. If you choose a hardware configuration, by the time you have it settled, and working, the hardware is no longer available, and nobody wants to buy it anyway, because there is newer stuff available. .
--- End quote ---
Hi Doug,
as I am preparing for the User Meeting in Cologne I would like to give you one example why I still am of the opinion that concentrating on selected Hardware would have been the best and only possible choice:
The X200t I use from Lenovo:
- first models have been availiable in 2009
- you can still buy them for reasonable prices
- you can get all (Windows) Drivers from the Lenovo Homepage ever since
In 2009 I bought my first one, it took me a lot of time and help to figure out how to get the hardware supported best by eComstation and OS/2.
Finally in 2010 I reached the goal with a lot of help from the community.
Almost EVERYTHING was and is working since:
- ACPI
- AHCI
- Sound
- Grafic with Snap
- LAN
- WLAN (with an easy to patch BIOS and repalcing Intel 4965 WLAN card)
- UMTS / HSPA (!)
- USB
- Card Reader
- the Stylus
- the Touch (but I do not have a touch model)
...
I do not know if there is another "modern Laptop" since than around that is that stable and well supported!
There is a big variety of X200T models, meanwhile I sold mine in early 2012 - but later I discovered that I probably will never find one Laptop with that abilities again.
So this summer I bought one from ebay that was marked as "used" but it has never been used before, the only thing was that the box has been opened before.
So I bought it, patched the BIOS, replaced the WLAN and restored my Clone on it - and it was up and running from the first second on!
So - this is running already for more than four years now.
It is still the best choice (if you do not need the Tablet one can choose the X200 as well, the same should work with the T400 and T500 series...) for an eComStation Laptop I guess.
Imagine what could have been, if....
But - what shells :-)
Alex Taylor:
Agree 100% with Daniel's post.
Last year I sat down to try and learn how to write a simple WPS class. My objective: create a subclass of WPFolder which added a single new item to its standard context menu. After puzzling through several confusing tutorials on EDM/2 which were clearly written for older versions of SOM, I eventually created something which I didn't entirely understand but which at least compiled and showed up as a new WPS class. However, it did nothing. No new menu item. I could find no information about how to debug or diagnose it, or where to look for more information. Disheartened, I just gave up and shelved it. I no longer have the time or the motivation to dig into it any more.
These are the barriers that face anyone trying to get into WPS development.
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