1. RE: Brief WinClass: Specs, Purpose
>> 8 ew demos (7 are for Ole/COM)
AL:
What are EW Demos ??
Please name these demos, I did not see them called out in the
file list.
Can your library run the grid demo that is in Matt's EUCOM ??
What is the advantage of using Ole/COM for the clipboard when
the clipboard can be accessed from dos or windows programs ??
Bernie
2. RE: Brief WinClass: Specs, Purpose
> From: Bernie Ryan [mailto:xotron at bluefrognet.net]
>
> >> 8 ew demos (7 are for Ole/COM)
> AL:
> Can your library run the grid demo that is in Matt's EUCOM ??
Taking a quick look at what Al has done, it is certainly possible to extend
it to run the grid demo. What's missing is basically ActiveX support.
There are a whole bunch of interfaces that you need to call, and a bunch of
others that you have to implement, and they don't appear to be there yet.
Matt Lewis
3. RE: Brief WinClass: Specs, Purpose
> From: Al Getz [mailto:Xaxo at aol.com]
>
> Hello Matt, Bernie,
>
> I havent touched on AX yet but Matt since your the resident
> COM expert perhaps you can give me a few pointers on what's involved.
>
> While your at it, before that i would like to implement a
> simple interprocess comm using Com for the Display Server i
> made a while back. Perhaps you can outline a few things to
> speed this implementation up a bit also.
>
> As you can see i have no reference on COM nor any other
> books on it either (yet). So far i've been playing it all
> by ear and a bit of experimentation 
ActiveX has a lot more overhead. Off the top of my head, you'll need to
implement things like IOleWindow, IOleContainer and a bunch of other similar
sounding interfaces. My impelementations don't actually do much, but you
gotta have 'em. I learned by reading the web, especially the MSDN ActiveX
sections, and a LOT of trial and error, which continues to this day.
Matt Lewis
4. RE: Brief WinClass: Specs, Purpose
> From: Al Getz [mailto:Xaxo at aol.com]
>
> Thanks for the info on it.
> It looks like it may be a little while before i get to doing
> anything with AX. For one thing, i'd like to take some time
> to check out the use of the Linux op system, which a number
> of people are using these days.
>
> What do you think is the primary reason for using AX in
> an application? What kind of functionality does it bring
> to the app that cant be done another way?
There are a lot of ActiveX objects out there that do lots of different
things. For instance, Microsoft Office is basically a bunch of ActiveX
objects (I include an Excel and a Word demo in EuCOM). Many other
applications use ActiveX objects as add-ins. You can dynamically plug
ActiveX objects into an application this way. They're basically dlls, but
with some rules about how you interact with them. The standardization makes
it easier to use different ActiveX objects vs. using different dlls, where
each dll would likely have its own, proprietary API. The COM interfaces
allow you to use binary code written in other languages because of the
standardization.
Matt Lewis
5. RE: Brief WinClass: Specs, Purpose
> From: Al Getz [mailto:Xaxo at aol.com]
>
> While your at it, before that i would like to implement a
> simple interprocess comm using Com for the Display Server i
> made a while back. Perhaps you can outline a few things to
> speed this implementation up a bit also.
If you really want to speed up your implementation, you could use EuCOM for
your COM needs. :)
It's not Win32Lib specific, although some of the API might have a Win32Lib
feel (though I include tk_mem.e with EuCOM, since I used it's method of
grouping memory allocations).
Matt Lewis
6. RE: Brief WinClass: Specs, Purpose
<snippage occurred>
> From: Al Getz [mailto:Xaxo at aol.com]
>
> I would think about that, but EuCom (and other libs)
> and WinClass are based on different basic wrapping
> philosophies. This would mean a departure from the style of
> the WinClass Library. This in turn would force the
> programmer to write some kinds of code one way and other
> kinds of code another way.
That's all fine, but doesn't preclude the use of EuCOM. The way I'd see it
is that all calls to EuCOM would be made by the class files, just like you
mention below about RichEdit.ew:
> If you care to, you can briefly examine the RichEdit.ew
> file...It's a good example of a departure from the
> style and philosophy of the WinClass Lib...
> This means everytime the programmer goes to create or
> allocate something new, it ends up being written almost the
> same way no matter what the object is. This is considered
> high priority for the WinClass Lib.
This wouldn't be an issue with using EuCOM, except for the class wrappers.
Instead of using you OLE.ew (et al) you'd use similar calls to EuCOM. It
would be fairly simple to wrap individual calls to interfaces into functions
that either call the function or, in the case of ActiveX objects, that call
Idispatch::Invoke. I have tended to not write this additional layer of
wrapper for the EuCOM demos, and instead call invoke() directly, but that's
partly personal preference.
I wrote an automatic wrapper generator (tbrowse.exw) for EuCOM that takes an
object's typelib and creates a wrapper that can be used with no or very
little modification with EuCOM. It works pretty well, although sometimes
tbrowse doesn't properly register the ActiveX object that it uses (and is
included in the download).
> There is the possibility though, that EuCom could be used
> with a sort of 'helper' class which would wrap EuCom into
> the style required for WinClass, but if i were to do this
> myself i would need good documentation for the EuCom library.
> What is the state of the documentation as it is now?
I think that the EuCOM docs are pretty good (at least relative to the
typical Euphoria library docs), but I suppose the best answer is to point
you to my site to see for yourself:
http://www14.brinkster.com/matthewlewis/projects.html#eucom
There you will find the last release of EuCOM (v2.03). The docs and FAQ are
both included in the download, and are online at my site. I've tried to
make the docs as good as possible, though if you aren't familiar to COM, I'm
sure that they will let you down in places, and some of the topics are a bit
thinner than others. However, I'm *very* open to user suggestions and
questions, and use all the feedback that I get to improve the code and the
documentation (that's how the FAQ got started).
Matt Lewis
7. RE: Brief WinClass: Specs, Purpose
> From: Al Getz [mailto:Xaxo at aol.com]
>
> Ok thanks, i'll have to take another look at it soon.
> If it looks easy enough, ill try it.
>
> BTW, do you have a working demo of:
> 1. Drag and drop between apps
No, I just use Win32Lib for this. :)
> 2. Interprocess (between two apps) communications
Not using COM, but I have a DDE library in the archives.
Matt Lewis
