[WDSCI-L] Rexx

["Phil Coulthard" <coulthar@xxxxxxxxxx>]

There have been a few questions posted about REXX support in WDSC. The
bottom line is yes, I think
we could support it as a scripting language for the editor, at least. We
have it on our list as something
to evaluate eventually. Some of the tricky areas will be that REXX is not a
GUI language, other than
the one dialog you can use with LINEREAD (and that's not rexx, but lpex).
That's why in CODE we were
moving more towards Java, although it was bold-on support there (eg, all
static methods that used JNI
to talk to the editor which is written in C), and now that the editor is
written in Java and lives in an
extensible IDE written in Java ...  well, you get the point.

However, Jon is somewhat correct some of the time :-). Yes, Java being a
rich and typed language
can be more verbous than REXX which is loosely typed and designed for
simple scripting requirements,
which in fact is a large percentage of what we do when writing editor
extensions. While taking the time
to learn the eclipse Java APIs and the JLpex Java APIs is a great strategic
plan, and a good excuse
to learn Java before re-writing payroll, we do recognize a simpler
scripting language is important for the
out of box experience. "Its on our list" is all I can say, and the recent
flurry of discussion on it has helped
its priority.

Phil Coulthard, iSeries AD,  IBM Canada Ltd. coulthar@xxxxxxxxxxx