From: barrett@astro.cs.umass.edu (Daniel Barrett)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Usefulness of ARexx (was Re: More Amiga OS weaknesses and strengths)
Date: 7 Jan 93 00:03:48 GMT
Reply-To: barrett@astro.cs.umass.edu (Daniel Barrett)
Organization: BLAZEMONGER INCORPORATED


First Marc writes:
>>>[ARexx is] something that I've, to date, never used.

And then he writes:
>ARexx is no miracle scripting language.  It only allows you to slightly 
>integrate the abilities of two applications.

	Folks, here we have the classic "Marc Barrett Syndrome."  He has
never used it, but he makes sweeping generalizations about it anyway.

	Marc, you are wrong.  Pure and simple.  Your use of the word
"slightly" displays either your ignorance, your inability to think
creatively, or both.

	ARexx is a legitimate and powerful method for tool integration.  It
has abilities comparable to HP Softbench, Brown University's Field, DEC's
DEC-FUSE, Sun's ToolTalk, and other IPC systems for environment building.
As a language, it has support for sophisticated capabilities like parametric
polymorphism and code/data equivalence.  The use of strings as the only
message type allows for powerful message manipulation.  Even braindead,
1-line ARexx scripts can increase productivity by allowing the user to
invoke one program from inside another; for example, rerun LaTeX from inside
the previewer, or insert today's date at the current point in your word
processor.

	Do I hear chewing?  Is Marc eating his words?  Of course not.  He's
either going to make up an excuse, change the subject (no doubt bringing up
"DataTax" or "structured graphics" again), or respond to some other point
instead.  I don't know why I bother.

(Prediction for Marc's response:  he'll ignore this part of the article.)

>JRComm, Word Perfect, and PageStream.  These are the applications I use
>the most, these are the applications that I would most like to write ARexx
>scripts for, and none of these support ARexx.  

	Oh well.  You might try one of the ten other telecomm programs
that support ARexx, BTW.

>...if no application has a certain feature, then ARexx is useless to give
>you that feature.  For example, I would like to have an Amiga word processor
>with lots of structured fonts and which can import IFF DR2D or EPSF
>structured clip-art.  But even collectively, none of the Amiga word
>processors supply these features.

	Yes Marc, but that is totally irrelevant when discussing the
usefulness of ARexx.  That's like saying, "Hypercard is useless for
raytracing" or "Apricots are useless for fixing nuclear missiles."

	ARexx is a scripting language, and it allows applications to be
glued together.  If you call it something else, and then bash it for not
achieving some other goal, that's irrelevant.

(Prediction for Marc's reply:  "Ooh, ooh, it's NOT irrelevant.  And the
Amiga has nothing like Hypercard.")

>BTW, ARexx also not very useful if you are on a tight budget and can only
>afford a small number of productivity programs.

	Didn't you notice, in my original posting, when I said there are
over 100 freely distributable programs supporting ARexx?  This includes text
editors and word processors, telecommunication programs, IFF viewers, AutoDoc
browsers, voice recognition software, printing programs, BBSes, clocks,
mouse accelerator/screen blankers, shells, program schedulers, music "mod"
players, hypertext systems, spelling checkers, commodities, laser disc
controllers, text viewers, a Mandelbrot generator, TeX with a previewer,
universal cut/paste programs, ham radio software, address/phone databases,
Fred Fish index programs, e-mail software, genlock control, image
processing, business graphics, an outline processor, scientific data
plotting, news readers, debuggers, databases, neural network software, and
more.  Many of these fall into the "productivity" category.

	"Not useful on a limited budget" indeed.  BULLLLLL-SHIT!  It's all
available for the cost of a used 2400-baud modem or a few Fish Disks.

(Prediction for Marc's reply:  "Ooh, ooh, they don't support structured
graphics!!")

                                                        Dan
							(no relation, no way)

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| Dan Barrett -- Dept of Computer Science, Lederle Graduate Research Center |
| University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA  01003  --  barrett@cs.umass.edu |
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