REXX/imc is a Rexx interpreter for Linux/Unix. It supports all the standard
instructions and built-in functions, plus a small number of extensions, and
has a partial implementation of the SAA API allowing applications to call
Rexx programs and to register addressing environments, Rexx functions, and
exit handlers. It comes in source form with full documentation; binary
packages are also available for a small number of platforms, including
Red Hat Linux running on IBM-compatible
personal computers.
This web page gives you access to the online documentation of REXX/imc
and to news about the interpreter as well as to the REXX/imc package itself.
|
News |
Documentation |
The REXX/imc Package |
THE |
XCurses |
Apologies for the continued outdatedness of this web page.
I do hope that things will pick up at some point in the future.
The RPMs at the bottom of this page have finally been updated to THE-3.1
and XCurses-2.5!
The current version of REXX/imc is 1.76, an unofficial bugfix release
made on 25 February 2002. [Owing to a small oversight, this version
still claims to be "REXX/imc-beta-1.75", though with an updated build date.]
For more information please see the following
documents from the REXX/imc package.
REXX/imc 1.76 is about half way to the next official bugfix release 1.8
planned at some indeterminate time in the future; version
1.8 will probably be the last version (possibly apart from further
bugfixes) for some time. It is hoped that after a major rewrite
REXX/imc 2 will eventually surface, but there is no fixed timescale for
this and the project is some way off even being started yet.
[To be expanded]
Packages are supplied in tar.gz,
zip
and (for Linux) rpm formats.
Selected architectures have binary distributions available; these
come with installation instructions (except the rpm file, which
is installed using `rpm -i') and documentation. All the tar and
zip files unpack into a subdirectory of the current directory.
`Upper' patch
The following patch can be applied to the clean rexx-imc-1.76 source directory
to add the instruction "UPPER symbol [symbol...]" which will uppercase the
contents of each named symbol. Note that none of the packages above
includes this patch.
Patches for earlier releases
The following patch can be applied to the clean rexx-imc-1.75 source directory
to bring it up to release 1.76. This is not required if you have already
fetched any of the rexx-imc-1.76 packages.
The following patch can be applied to the clean rexx-imc-1.7 source directory
to bring it up to release 1.75. This is not required if you have already
fetched any of the rexx-imc-1.75 packages.
THE is an editor
written by Mark Hessling, modelled after IBM XEDIT and Mansfield KEDIT.
It can be compiled to include REXX/imc as its macro language. For more
information, visit the THE home site, but see also the patch below. However, here are some i386 and
source RPMs for THE based on REXX/imc running on Red Hat Linux. You should
install the above RPM for REXX/imc before installing THE.
The main THE-rexximc package contains the text-mode editor "the" together
with the documentation and also some macros which are supplied with the
source code. There is also a binary package THE-rexximc-X11 which adds to that
the command "xthe", a native X11 version of THE using XCurses
(see below). You will need to install the XCurses RPM if you wish to
install THE-rexximc-X11. In addition, you need XCurses-devel if you wish to
recompile the source RPM of THE-rexximc. Note that you no longer need to
install the plain THE-rexximc package if you just want the X11 version,
but you won't get any documentation or sample macros if you don't.
Release 2 of these THE-3.1 packages allows you to resize the terminal in
which you are running the text version of THE (in the previous release
THE would not recognise the size change). This is not available for
Red Hat 5 because the resize often results in a crash (this is
probably due to a bug in ncurses 4.2), but fortunately no one
except me runs that old system any more.
This patch fixes compilation errors in THE version 3.1 when you use REXX/imc
as the interpreter. The reason for the errors is that this version of THE
tries to use a system exit which isn't implemented in REXX/imc yet. The
exit is only used for resolving external function names; much the same
effect can be produced by setting REXXPATH to include your THE macro path.
This patch also makes sure THE registers its functions in the correct case.
XCurses is the Unix version of
PDCurses,
a curses-alike library maintained by Mark Hessling. XCurses allows most
ordinary curses applications to be compiled as native X11 applications.
This package is used by the X11 version of THE.
Last updated January 2003
