🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <unruh.717986584@physics.ubc.ca> unruh@physics.ubc.ca (William Unruh) writes:

> How does OS2 know if it is an OS2 or a DOS application?

There are flags in the executable header.

>                                                         Why can't DOS
> applications just run in an OS2 window- esp if they do not use
> graphics?

Well, an OS/2 window is attached to an OS/2 session.  Therefore, it
contains none of the DOS emulation support necessary to execute DOS
executables.  You need to start a DOS session for that.  Now, I suppose it
would be possible to start the DOS session in the background, and still
direct output to the OS/2 window the executable was started from.  However,
that would be limited to a small number of DOS applications that used DOS
or BIOS for output, or would entail a decent amount of overhead if it
trapped DOS screen accesses and adjusted them into OS/2 calls.  Plus you
get the overhead for the OS/2 process to talk to the DOS process.

This doesn't mean it can't be done - who knows, maybe IBM is working on it.
It would certainly be nice for all the simple command line DOS utilities
out there.


--
-- David
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