OpenEuphoria

WIN32LIB

• Posted by David Alan Gay <moggie at INTERLOG.COM> Aug 12, 2000
• 491 views

Greetings

To put the Drake Ice Smackdown to rest, I want to start a thread that is
related to Euphoria again.

I'm excited that WIN32LIB is now greatly supported and enhanced by many
programmers. This ensures a promising future as bright as Euphoria's own.

However, one thing that I feel is very important but has not been discussed
here is keeping WIN32LIB in line with Euphoria's own goal...to keep it
simple and easy to use (or to ensure we say "No" to complex programming
languages). If we enhance WIN32LIB to the point of being a battleship, it;s
going to become something only the most seasoned programmer will be able to
master. More junior programmers may be discouraged from using it and stick
to text graphics in a Windows console screen if it becomes too difficult to
use.

Expanding the point further is a need to enhance the documentation to
WIN32LIB in the same zeal as enhancing WIN32LIB itself. I know writing
documentation for a program is not as exciting as writing the program
itself. I personally find it dull....I hate writing documentation at work as
a programmer, and only do it because my boss tells me to :>....While I think
wolfgang has done a great job with his tutorial on WIN32LIB, and thank David
Cuny for enclosing the demo programs with WIN32LIB (particularly GENERIC.EW,
which I raid constantly for experimentation), a full blown tutorial in the
same realm of ABGTE is overdue...to explain not just how to use WIN32LIB,
but to give a general overview of the concepts of Windows programming using
WIN32LIB. For example, it took me a while to figure out what was meant by
controls, parent and child windows, and focus. I finally understood what
they were only by experimenting with pieces of the demo programs...sometimes
with interesting results (like a reboot or colour inverted screen)

Please do not consider this a slam of WIN32LIB: I am trying to get WIN32LIB
to work for me because it is the first toolkit that has managed to open
Windows programming up for me and make it easier. I offer my suggestions
because I support it wholeheartedly and want other programmers new to
Windows programming to discover what I have about WIN32LIB.

Thanks

David