From: andy@pswtech.com ("Mr. X") Subject: Unix, Win32 & Posix subsystems [was: TeX implementations?] 29 Oct 1996 22:07:17 -0800 Sender: daemon@cygnus.com Approved: cygnus.gnu-win32@cygnus.com Distribution: cygnus Message-ID: <3276DC93.4CA6.cygnus.gnu-win32@pswtech.com> References: <199610290633.PAA15705@bird.fu.is.saga-u.ac.jp> <9610291053.ZM27457@morgan.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0Gold (WinNT; I) Original-To: Graham Original-CC: gnu-win32@cygnus.com Original-Sender: owner-gnu-win32@cygnus.com > between making NT look like Unix by talking to the win32 API and making NT look like Unix by talking to the POSIX API. On the surface, it sounds like Graham is asking a naieve question, but at another level he's not. He assumes that the NT executive can be thought of as policy-neutral, that the "protected subsystems" are peers to one another in some sense. They might have been -- and might yet be -- that would be cool, but they are not. My observation is that the Posix subsystem was simply a half-hearted attempt; a show necessary in order to win certain contracts. The OS/2 subsystem, never more than a contingency plan. IMHO, Microsoft designers never really grasped the concepts of network transparency and policy-neutrality. Others have said they understood them and rejected them on marketing grounds. The mish-mosh of display primitives and fundamentals such as container objects in the MFC is merely an example. The internals appear to be in very much worse shape. But anyone who agrees with Andrew Schulman about undocumented interfaces between Microsoft operating systems and their applications will assume that there are undocumented interfaces between the NT executive and the Win32 protected subsystem. What's going on with that? - For help on using this list, send a message to "gnu-win32-request@cygnus.com" with one line of text: "help".