Re: Win32Lib vs. Ease of Use
Lewis Townsend wrote:
> Okay, I guess the hardest part about Win32Lib
> is that there is so much of it. In VEL there
> is just a few commands to master that do a
> lot of stuff:
Point taken. In Llama, I added an interface that looked like this:
setMy( control, attribute, value )
getMy( control, attribute )
But I abandoned it, because it seemed that writing:
setMy( checkbox, Active, True )
state = getMy( checkBox, Checked )
But it didn't really seem to add that much, since you needed to know the
names of the attributes anyway. In Win32Lib, I just prefix 'get' and 'set'
to the attribute when naming the functions:
setActive( checkbox, True )
state = getCheck( checkbox )
I'm sure better documentation would help a lot. Someone (I've *very* bad
with names) had written a nice Win32Lib tutorial and placed it on the
internet somewhere.
> Also, I've never understood fully the concept of
> on_paint () is that the same thing as On_Change or
> On_Load?
Only in the sense that they are both event traps. The onPaint routine is
responsible for rendering your window. Windows doesn't keep a copy of the
image you render on the window. For example, imagine that you had written a
simple scribble program. If you resized the window, the window would be
erased, and Windows would tell your application that it needed to redraw the
entire window.
[Well, technically it's possible to ask Windows to keep a copy of your
window's image, but it eats up a ton of memory. Unless you are doing
graphics, you don't need to have that kind of overhead.]
Events that cause an onPaint to trigger include:
- another window covers your windows, and then moves away
- your window is resized
- your window is hidden, and then displayed (onOpen triggers this)
The parameters passed to the onPaint routine tell your program what part of
the window needs to be updated. Most applications ignore these values, and
simply update the entire window.
When I first wrote Win32Lib, I tried to hide all these details, but this
turned out to be a bad plan.
Again, better documentation would really help. With the addition of double
buffering, writing graphic-intensive applications is a lot easier than it
used to be.
> Why does the Create () need the position and
> size of the control? ...
I figured that the attributes in create() are pretty much the minimum that
controls shared. I agree that you could use default values for the size, but
you'd almost always want to change it. You wouldn't want to use the default
values for position, or all the controls would overlay each other. I suppose
the create() routine could be made smart enough to auto-position new
controls, but in this case I think dumber is better - you are invariably
going to change the values.
Most of these issues go away if you use the IDE.
> I'd be glad to use Win32Lib instead if I
> can figgure it out.
I think you'll find Win32Lib a whole lot easier to use once the IDE is
complete. I guess I have a lot of documentation to rewrite as well.
-- David Cuny
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