In a move that should lift a little the flagging prospects for the OS/2 operating system, Microsoft Corp has introduced a Windows to OS/2 Software Migration Kit for converting Windows applications quickly and easily to OS/2 Presentation Manager. The new kit provides a layer of code that makes converted Windows applications look, feel and work like OS/2 Presentation Manager applications and enables the applications to use OS/2 features. The company also promises to add the technology in the Software Migration Kit to the next version of OS/2 to enable off-the-shelf Windows applications to run under OS/2 Presentation Manager. The kit provides a run-time translation layer that maps Windows application programming int erfaces into OS/2 interfaces: it consists of a set of dynamic link libraries which the developer links into the Windows application, which then appears and works like a Pres entation Manager application – but 5% to 10% slower than native Presen tation Manager ones; if developers want to take advantage of other OS/2 features they must add OS/2-specific interfaces such as long filenames, extended attributes and multiple-ex ecution threads to their Windows source code. No prices were given.
