What is PMOS/2?
PMOS/2 is a port to OS/2 of the PMOS
library sources
for Modula-2
programming. Basically, it's
a collection of Modula-2 sources that will (I hope) make your
programming
job easier. It is free for non-profit use.
The software has been tested with the XDS compiler. I try to
stick to
standard ISO Modula-2, so it should be portable without too much
difficulty
to other ISO-compliant compilers. There are, however, quite a few
operating
system dependencies, so porting the code to other operating systems
could
be a fairly big job.
Why bother?
The principal function of the original PMOS library is to let you write
multitasking software for DOS. It contains a multitasking kernel,
device
drivers, and a variety of utility modules. Since device drivers and
multitasking facilities are already built in to OS/2, a port of this
software to OS/2
might seem to be redundant. Do you really need this software?
There are two main reasons why PMOS/2 can be useful:
- For porting software between DOS and OS/2. If you've
already
used PMOS for DOS applications, then PMOS/2 will make it easy for you
to port that software to OS/2. Conversely, it lets you write OS/2
programs
that can later be ported to DOS.
- Once you start reading the OS/2 API documentation, you'll
come
to understand the old saying that "an elephant is a mouse designed by
IBM". Whatever the other virtues of OS/2, its programming interface
is just as complex and obscure as older systems like Unix or Windows. I
firmly believe that the multithreading paradigm offered by PMOS/2
makes programming a lot easier.
In any case, programmers like working with paradigms that are familiar
-
I think that is proved by the popularity of emx among C programmers.
Where do you get it?
The current version of PMOS/2 is pmos2014.zip
(last updated 2014/08/28 - 562,037 bytes).
Related files
This page has been translated to Serbo-Croatian by Jovana Milutinovich from Webhostinggeeks.com, and to Portuguese by Artur Weber. Also available in Hindi, thanks to theunbiasedreviews.com.
The author of PMOS/2 is
Peter Moylan.
Last modified 19 April 2020.