From: strobl@gmd.de (Wolfgang Strobl)
Subject: Re: MS ready to release 32-bit Word & Excel?!?! Read on...
Organization: GMD, Sankt Augustin, Germany
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 11:55:46 GMT

In <1992Oct11.003218.56358@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu> sjb5@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (STACY JOHN BEHRENS) writes:

>In article <1992Oct7.010444.4614@netcom.com>, erb@netcom.com (Ebbot R. Bane) wri
>tes:

[...]
>>
>>Ok, so OS/2 is a flop.  But will NT succeeed?  Yes, for one reason: Win32s.
>>

[...]

>We'll see.  That has yet to be proven and as of right now is a marketing claim
>and therefore worthless.
>>
>>Win32s is a win even if there is no Windows NT.  I expect most developers
>>of Windows software to move swiftly to Win32s (Those who don't will have poor
>>performance relative to competitors).  But wait!  As a *free bonus* these
>>same binaries will run in *native* mode under Windows NT!  So my company only
>>has to put one box on the shelf, "Requires: Windows 3.1 or Windows NT".
>>
>That is potentially quite nice.  However, that does take away much of the
>incentive to move to NT.  If there are only Win32s apps and no NT apps, then
>why move?  I personally would anyway, but people are going to ask that.  This
>is the same arguement that people have been applying to OS/2 and it is just as
>stupid.

Win32s applications *are* NT applications which are able to run under
WIndows 3.1. In a way, they are similar to family applications on OS/2,
where you run OS/2 binaries on DOS. There is no equivalent to that
feature, for PM.

>>By shifting to Win32s developers will *automatically* be creating a flood of
>>Windows NT native apps.  As history has shown it is the apps that sell
>>systems.

>Hold your horses.  Win32s apps don't quite cut it as NT native apps.  I would
>call them 32-bit Win3.1 native apps.  NT native apps are ones that take *full*
>advantage of the system and Win32s by its very nature cannot do this.

There are two flaws in this argument.

* Win32s applications *are* NT applications. As long as an application
  doesn't nead OS functionality where Win32s and Win32 differ, you
  can't distinguish a Win32s application and a Win32 application, because
  there *is* no difference. So your argument is a gross overgeneralization;
  the statement "Win32s apps don't quite cut it as NT native apps" may
  apply to *some* applications, but not to most or all, as you statement
  seems to imply.

* Win32s applications *can* take advantage of some NT features, even
  if they aren't aware of NT. An application doesn't have to use
  multithreading in order to profit from NTs pre-emptiveness. An
  application doesn't have to use NTs security calls in order
  to profit from NTs task and file protection features. 

  If an application really has to run on Win32s *and* to take
  full advantage of a NT feature, on NT, it is not much 
  work for the developer to add code to his app to do that. But it
  is hard to construct real examples where this is really
  necessary. Most professional developers split their apps
  into modules anyway, so they proabably will use a core
  app (or dll) which is identical on both systems, and different
  support dlls on both systems. 

Wolfgang Strobl
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