From: brian@jaguar.cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill)
Subject: Re: Some new tidbits and my 'retirement' from os2.advocacy.
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 92 23:51:29 GMT

In article <BxBBnv.BAn@news.iastate.edu> TW.FY4@isumvs.iastate.edu (Timothy I Miller) writes:
...
>In article <1992Nov6.080429.10588@fcom.cc.utah.edu>,
>>[PC Week; November 2, 1992; Page 57,64]
>>[A reminder from my OS/2 developer conference report:
>>        Mirrors leaves the app code itself as 16-bit.
>>        Apps that use mirrors incur that overhead, the overhead
>>        of the API translation, and the overhead of the thunking
>>        from the 16-bit to 32-bit DLLs.
>>        Plus they are really written for Windows, not OS/2.
>>]
>
>     [Stuff about Mirrors deleted...]
>
>>...
>>[
>>Well, this is good news for the Describe folks, neither WordPerfect
>>nor AmiPro will be true 32-bit apps.
>>]
>
>     Well, as I understand it (and I heard it from Lotus), Ami Pro
>and 123 are both going to be completely native 32-bit apps.  This is
>because they use Borland C/C++ to do the development.  I don't know
>about the rest of their products, though.

Well according to the Micrografx representative at the OS/2 developers
conference, the following products/vendors will be using Mirrors:
	Micrographix (Draw and Designer -- Draw was released the day before
			the conference.)
	Corel (Draw)
	Spinnaker (PFS: Works)
	Zsoft (Publisher's Paintbrush)
	Lotus (Most apps, including Ami Pro)
	Borland
	Interleaf
	Assymetrix

Micrografx represents the product that you come out with as a 32-bit app
but the truth is that the code of the app itself is 16-bit.  When the
app makes a Windows call, it thunks to a 32-bit DLL that emulates the
Windows call under PM.
Thus Lotus may call Ami Pro a 32-bit OS/2 2.0 app (and it will only run
under OS/2 2.0), but performance-wise, and especially feature-wise it is far
from one.

The method used will cause an app like a word processor to possibly run
faster than under Windows 3.1, but definitely not significantly so.

An app like a spreadsheet, where the 16-bit part of the app does non-trivial
CPU-oriented things, could easily end up running slower than under
Windows 3.1.

While Micrografx said that their new release of Draw for OS/2 was slightly
faster than the Windows 3.1 version, the evidence I saw said otherwise.
The guy was using a 486 33 (I asked) and it was definitely responding
slower than Windows Draw does for me under 3.1 on a _386_ 33.  This of course
is not a very good test as we had different video hardware.  If anyone out
there is in a position to make an objective test, I'd be interested in the
results.

In any event the apps made this way will run slower than apps even
simply recompiled for Win32.

Once Micrografx gets the Win32s version done, then these apps will run
as 32-bit throughout, and thus only incur API translation overhead.

However there are three things abundantly clear:
	Most if not all the big names are sticking with the Windows API.

	Once Micrografx gets the Win32s version out, why would mainstream
	app vendors want to make PM apps?

	OS/2 apps written to this way will always lag the Windows versions.

Thus is it any wonder that IBM broke off that part of its relationship with
Micrografx?

>
>Timothy Miller

Brian
-- 
C. Brian Sturgill                   I strongly encourage you to mail your copy
University of Utah                     of Ross Perot's:  "United We Stand
Center for Software Science            How we can take back our country",
brian@cs.utah.edu; CIS: 70363,1373        to President-elect Clinton.
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy