OpenEuphoria

Re: VCL

• Posted by LEVIATHAN LEVIATHAN <kiduv1999 at HOTMAIL.COM> Feb 22, 1999
• 647 views

>>
>>>VCL is the Visual Component Library. It a collection of native code
>>>components that encapsulate (each) a visual interface element ( =
control
>>>or gadget). It's much simpler to just include a "button" component in
your
>>>application than to explicitly creating/registering the window class
and
>>>then create it and make a wndproc. A clear interface is required, in
>>>essence you neee OO to achieve this, but with some tricky use of
routine
>>>id's we should be able to by-pass this obstacle.
>>
>>Can you point to some reference which gives more details?
>
>Well you can always go to Borland's page (yes, Inprise has begun to use
>again the Borland brand) at www.borland.com, or www.inprise.com and
take a
>look to information regarding Delphi & C++ Builder.  But the actual
>implemetation of a component library that Borland made isn't important.
>Microsoft has their own (for system wide usage), it's called COM
(Component
>Object Model) that is the base for other technologies like OLE, ActiveX
and
>ADO.
>
>COM support in Euphoria would be great, we could use all those ActiveX
>controls (.OCX) VB can use... unfortunatly I belive this would be a
very
>complex task and I'm ot sure if a library wrapper could be built for
this
>purpose. COM is quite mysterious to me ;)
>
>About this future ECM, Euphoria Component Model, (ECL would be the
>"standard" components deployed with Euphoria):
>
>A interface API should be developed to command the component
>appearence/functionality. The component should be built providing a
defined
>interface. Interfaces may be:
>        ECM_Create()    -- Creates an instance of the component
>        ECM_Destroy()   -- Destroys an instance of the component
>        ECM_Command()   -- Send a component specific command (like
WinAPI's
>SendMessage)
>        ECM_GetProperty()       -- Retrives a component property (data
member)
>        etc...
>
>All components must adhere to the ECM specification interfaces. Note
that
>not only windows components can be developed. A compression component
could
>be built, as well as abstarct components (such as a dataset).
Versioning
>compatibility problems (like in win32lib) would be "softened" by these
>standard interfaces.
>
>By adhering to a specification no component would requiere a special
>wrapper, ECM is the wrapper. A method to sub-class or inherit a
component
>would be quite usefull to build a componet tree, allowing third parties
to
>further customize an existing component. Note that Windows
standard/common
>controls could be wrapped by ECM components. Euphoria developers would
be
>(almost) completly abstracted from the underlaying WinAPI!
>
>It's all about abstraction... keep the interfaces simple, let the
component
>developer do the work. With a component model Euphoria can become a RAD
>tool. ECM would do to Euphoria what Delphi (VCL) did to Pascal.
>
>Any suggestion?

Ohh... wow :) Unfortunatly, if I had some idea of COM, I would be able
to contribute my 2 cents on this, but this sounds like a real cool
project to concentrate on... AND, if the Euphorian community can team up
to make standards to a future ECM model, this can actually make other
developers look over to Euphoria, and peek in at it.

Well, its only... oh, 6 in the morning... time to go to school. My cent
and a half... :)

-- "LEVIATHAN"

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