1. Re: exw (hiding windows complexity)
- Posted by Jacques Deschenes <desja at GLOBETROTTER.QC.CA>
Nov 09, 1997
-
Last edited Nov 10, 1997
At 10:41 10-11-97 +1200, you wrote:
>exw: Holy Grail found, programming panacea, or a big yawn at the start
>of a newly erupting silly season?
>
>246 lines of incomprehensible garbage (unless, of course, you are
>willing to wade through 20 mb of Big Bill's wisdom) just to declare "A
>Plain Vanilla Window using Euphoria!" ? Jiri
>
No doubt that windows programming is a lot more complex than dos programming,
but it does a lot more too. windows API is over 1000 functions, there is
numerous structures and constants. At first look one can get easily overwhelm.
To program windows one needs easy access to the API reference and to types
and constants definitions. Beginners should not expect to program windows
after a few hours of studies, They would need a lot more than that. Due
to the easy learning of euphoria for DOS, maybe some of you were expecting
that euphoria for win32 would be an easy way to windows programming. They
will be desapointed.
I'm afraid that euphoria does nothing to ease the way, as windows coding
make heavy use of structures and euphoria lack it.
Visual tools like VB and Delphi ease the way by automating most of the
repetive coding associate with the visual user interface. Same kind of tools
could be developped for euphoria. It is also possible to write wrapper for the
predefined dialogs and controls. Those wrapper would also simplify
programming but there is price to pay in lost of flexibility.
I'm presently working on a wrapper for the common dialogs (comdlg32.dll).
This will give access to them by a simple call to a function, but as I said
flexibility will be lost. I thougth I could release this code at the end of
this weekend but it will take me more time than expected.
Until help tools are developped I don't think windows programming in euphoria
is for the beginners unless they have the time and motivation to study
windows complexity. For the beginners I suggest to limits their projects
to a single window and use it like a console with function likes DrawText(),
Textout() and
ScrollWindow() then the rest of the code could moslty be programmed like
their dos applications. With that single window app. and a wrapper for the
comdlg32.dll, one You have access to OpenfileDlg, SaveAsDlg, PrinterDlg,
PageSetupDlg, ChooseFontDlg, FindTextDlg and ReplaceTextDlg without big coding
effort. And scrollbars are option available in standard window. They will miss
menus, buttons and others controls.
I will try to post a demo for that kind of simplified WinApp. inside a week.
Regards,
Jacques Deschenes
Baie-Comeau, Quebec
Canada
desja at globetrotter.qc.ca
