[fpc-pascal]Re: fp under Windows

[Gabor DEAK JAHN]

At 02/09/2001 12:00, you wrote:

Dear Matt,

> No, you use the NT Console window.. this (at the moment) emulates DOS
(fairly
> badly on 2000) and the support for 16 MS DOS *will* dissappear in the not
too
> distant future.. certainly when the 64-bit version of Windows arrives.. I'm

Right, but we were speaking about just the opposite, that FPC is *not* a DOS 
program but a Win32 console application (meaning the Win32 version of FPC, 
of course, but why would anybody try to run a different one on Win32 
systems?), so it will work regardless of whether NT or any other Windows has 
or will have a genuine DOS box or not.

Actually, I can use both. I don't remember whether this comes with NT 
automatically or I added it to the Start Menu later myself (I installed my 
system several years ago), but I can start either SYSTEM32\CMD.EXE or 
SYSTEM32\COMMAND.COM. The first is the Command Prompt, the second a DOS 
Window.

But when I use FPC, I *don't* start a Command Prompt. I call FPC directly 
from the editor I use. It simply starts as any other Win32 program. The part 
of the kernel responsible for launching programs knows from a field inside 
the EXE header that it is supposed to be a console application, not a GUI 
one, so it sets up the window and everything else accordingly. This 
functionality will not disappear from future versions of Windows, this is 
for sure. But even if it does, the only thing to do would be to add a GUI 
front layer to FPC, and that would be fairly easy.

> The thing you have to remember here though is that, first of all these
are 32
> bit applications that wil not run outside of Windows, and secondly, once DOS
> support does go (and it will at some point) Microsoft will either replace
the
> Console, or certainly re-think the way it works.

The console has nothing to do with DOS, there is no link between the two. 
The Command Prompt is a 32-bit console application (CMD.EXE in NT) which 
happens to reproduce some functionality of the old DOS command interpreter 
(COMMAND.COM). It is a completely independent program, requiring no DOS to 
rely on. Anybody could write such a CMD.EXE, in FPC for instance, that asks 
for commands, interprets and executes them, starting other programs if 
necessary.

DOS can go (actually, as you mentioned, NT has no real DOS, never had, from 
day one it was only a DOS interface of documented DOS functions, meaning 
that well-behaved DOS programs ran without any problem but ill-behaved ones, 
especially games, did not; NT was never intended to be a gaming platform, 
fortunately, I might add), and the console can and will stay.


Regards,

   Gabor DEAK JAHN

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Gabor DEAK JAHN -- Budapest, Hungary.
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