Roots

Some people never loose sight of where they came from, and Seaware is no exception. Founded in 1983, Seaware has had roots back to the pioneering days of the original PC and Andrew Fuggleman's "Freeware" concepts. Extended Batch Language was originally built from the curosity of wondering how DOS worked. After exploring the internals of DOS 1.1 at that time, Frank Canova used his experience with large IBM mainframe languages called EXEC and REXX to create EBL. The first EBL version was done as a weekend project and had just 13 commands, but it served as the basis for a great beginning. Immediately everyone realized the large void DOS had and EBL quickly became an irreplacable companion. As a shareware product from the start, EBL grew from customer feedback. Extensions to the language were less like the IBM mainframe, and more like the PC environment that it ran on.

Now with EBL-PLUS, the language has taken another evoloutionary step based on customer feedback. New "look-and-feel" commands like EDIT(), SELECT(), and WINDOW() commands were added to allow everyone to write EBL programs that are easier to use. Additional commands like REPEAT and WAIT follow more modern languages like HYPERCARD. Finally there are a whole host of string and system functions like FIND() and WORDS() which take the best from the REXX language. And there's no stopping there.

As we take on new roots with EBL-PLUS, we are committed to follow the tradition that has made EBL an evolving solutions language. We always look forward to comments from people like you that will improve EBL for everyone. While some things are easier to implement than others, we guarantee that all ideas will be seriously considered for the next version of EBL. After all, our root is where our heart is.