OpenEuphoria

Re: Windows stuff...

• Posted by Matt Lewis <matthewwalkerlewis at yahoo.com> Sep 14, 2004
• 470 views

Juergen Luethje wrote:
> 
> Derek Parnell wrote:

<snip>

> As always, it's a good idea to start with the most basic things. For
> MS Windows this will probably be API constants and wrappers for C-like
> structures and function calls.

For all the reasons Derek mentioned, I don't think that C-like structures
are going to come bundled as a standard include.  The only way this will 
come with Eu is if it's built in.

<snip>

> From the consumers point of view, this will be a nice situation, because
> s/he has the choice, which Euphoria interpreter/compiler to buy.
> Euphoria publishers of course will not *have to* supply all 3rd-party
> constants (I never said "all" BTW), but if some publishers do so, while
> others don't, this might influence the choice of the customers.
> Including MS Windows API constants and wrappers for C-like structures
> and function calls will certainly raise the value of a product.

I'm not convinced that distributing such things is such a great idea.
As I say below, having constants isn't all that valuable.  The Eu docs
currently point the new user to the most popular source of constants, 
etc.  The new programmer (Euphoria seems to be the first language for
many people) probably shouldn't be mucking about with that sort of
thing, and the more experienced will probably be comfortable with 
downloading an additional package or thirty.  These things are very
unstable compared with Eu (several to many updates per year for the
libraries, vs less than one per year for Eu), that anything that was 
bundled would likely be out of date when many get the language.

<snip>

> Sorry for not having expressed myself clearly enough. I wanted to say:
> In the current century, Borland C comes with MS Windows API constants,
> Open Watcom C comes with MS Windows API constants, Borland Delphi comes
> with MS Windows API constants, MS Visual Basic comes with MS Windows API
> constants, PowerBASIC comes with MS Windows API constants, ...

<snip>

> ...we are talking about simple constants and function wrappers.
> How many users of Delphi or PowerBASIC say, that the built-in Windows
> API constants and function wrappers don't suit their needs? Zero, very
> probably.
> The more complex things are, the more likely it is that several people
> have different needs, but we are talking about very basic stuff here.

<snip>

> I do think it is a *possible* standard, and I wish Tommy all the best,
> of course.
> Anyway, I'm afraid that the chances for becoming a standard are not high.
> I don't know the reason why, probably it is the same reason, why neither
> EuWinGUI, nor w32engin, nor Win32Lib, nor Arwen, nor EuGTK, nor
> wxEuphoria has become a standard ...
> 
> I get headache when I think of highly motivated and skilled programmers,
> re-inventing the wheel over and over again.

But making wheels is fun. :)

Frankly, the list of constants is the most trivial part of writing a 
wrapper.  Sure, there's a bit of work to get them in there, but it's 
basically mindless copy and paste work.  The tough part is providing the
layer above the raw API.  It's possible to simply wrap the c_func() calls,
but this isn't a very useful library.

Matt Lewis