[Coco] CoCo TALK #18 an introduction to OS9

[Wayne Campbell]

On Tue, Jul 25, 2017 at 10:47 AM, Dave Philipsen <dave at davebiz.com> wrote:

> Actually, in my opinion if you write a program that requires an external
> program (OS9 command) then you should probably be prepared for the fact
> that that external program could change in which case it would behoove you
> to include the external program with your distribution. And, if you find
> that you really do have a problem with such a program that calls an
> external program (like tmode and dir) then just use the older version of
> the program which behaves correctly with your program.


I actually did write DCom to use tmode. When I came back to it and found I
had to change that, it became part of the reason I decided to start over. I
determined that it was better to use system calls since they had not
changed. However, I was actually referring to other programs I had heard
about that used some of the command modules (predominantly tmode) and
realized that many such programs were now broken due to the changes  in
option syntax. I believe that this information is vital to anyone being
introduced to OS-9, as they may run into the problem when they try to run
some older program under NitrOS-9 and otherwise don't know why it doesn't
work.