Prominare Development System

Prominare Development System (PDS) is a set of 32 bit OS/2 visual development tools originally released by Canadian company Stewart, Dufour and Gossage Ltd. but later sold by Prominare Inc.

Overview
The system was unusual in that it supported not only C code and resource generation for creating 32 bit OS/2 PM GUI programs but also generated code and resources for 16 bit OS/2 PM (OS/2 v1.x), Windows 3.1 and Windows NT, and included conversion utilities so that resources initially developed for Windows 3.x could be used by all four systems. This meant that with a suitable cross platform C or C++ compiler you could create and test all user interface elements for the four systems from an OS/2 desktop and even generate some basic program logic.

The Prominare Development System adhered to the CUA specifications but also supported a number of cross platform C++ class libraries including initially: but later added support for: at the same time support for was dropped for CommonView C++ when CA removed OS/2 support from it.
 * IBM User Interface Class Libraries (ICLUI)
 * CommonView C++ from Computer Associates
 * Borland Object Windows Library (OWL)
 * ObjectPM from Secant Technologies (not cross-platform)

In addition to several small utilities used for resource conversion etc., The PDS consists of three primary tools:
 * Prominare Designer:The main GUI builder part of the package, discussed on a separate page, click link above.


 * Prominare Builder:Prominare Builder is a graphical front end that let developers control via point-and-shoot, compilers, debug software, help compilers and other applications needed to generate GUI programs. PB is a rule-based tool that, as the company put it "lets the developer set compiling characteristics for the application without regard to the actual source languages that make up the application", in other words Prominare Builder is a graphical and rule based alternative to using batch files, script files and Make programs, although for complex projects PB also supported working with those text based tools to some degree.
 * The program explicitly supports: Borland C++ for OS/2, Microsoft C, Microsoft FORTRAN77, Microsoft Pascal, Watcom C, C 386 & C/C++32 and Zortech C++, but you can also use other languages by creating you own rules.


 * Prominare Editor:Prominare Editor (PE), is a generic source code text editor that has explicit support for the same languages as Prominare Builder, although it is focused towards C++ but can be used to edit source code for any language. PE works with Prominare Builder when the latter program detects an error during a build session. According to the company blurb the main features of Prominare Editor are: "error display and correction, multiple search and replace, Grep, and source analysis for uneven braces, parentheses, and quotes".

The Prominare Development System was originally priced at $795, by 1995 the company had discontinued the sales of the PDS system and concentrated on developing and updating Prominare Designer as a stand alone product although some of the resource conversion and extraction utilities were also made available in the Prominare Converter utility.

Version

 * Prominare Development System v2.x released in 1993 and supported OS/2 2.x, last known version of the branch is 2.1a
 * Prominare Development System v3.x

License
Commercial Software. Now discontinued.

Author

 * Stewart, Dufour and Gossage Ltd. (Original publisher)
 * Prominare Inc.
 * Matt Smith

Links

 * New Products - Dr. Dobb's Journal, Nov 1994