Lessons in Windows API programming (C++)

2012 in review December 31, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Alf P. Steinbach @ 10:33 am

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 12,000 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 20 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

Lesson 6: Command events & notifications < February 5, 2012

Filed under: c++ programming,programming,tutorial,windows api programming — Alf P. Steinbach @ 10:56 am

Contents of this lesson:
> Conceptual: how events are served to your code one at a time.
> Basic command event handling in HTML.
> Basic API-level command event handling for Windows windows.
> WM_COMMAND as command versus WM_COMMAND as notification.
> Posting versus sending of messages.

This lesson’s main points:

User commands are represented by simple integer identifiers, no arguments.
Hierarchical menus can be defined as resources.
To get XP/Vista/Windows 7 look and feel for e.g. buttons, one can include a suitable XML “manifest” resource.
The Windows API conflates user commands with child-to-parent window notifications in WM_COMMAND messages, and failure to properly differentiate these message meanings can cause e.g. undesirable infinite (or very deep) recursion or iteration.
The API is designed for hierarchical centralized control (C++ frameworks can use message reflection to implement a more object oriented distributed local control paradigm).

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Lesson 5: Window message basics < January 8, 2012

Filed under: c++ programming,programming,tutorial,Uncategorized,windows api programming — Alf P. Steinbach @ 5:05 am

Contents of this lesson:
> The power and limits of resources.
> Packed message arguments, manual unpacking.
> Use a separate message handler function for each message.
> Unpack arguments via undocumented message cracker macros.
> Be pedantically correct: support message results.

This lesson’s main points:

Windows window messages are much like C++ virtual functions.
The packing and unpacking of messages, having messages as data, introduces some complexity.
Dialog procedures impose special (complex) requirements on message handling.

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Lesson 4: Dialogs and resources < December 28, 2011

Filed under: c++ programming,programming,tutorial,windows api programming — Alf P. Steinbach @ 4:19 am

Contents of this lesson:
> Concepts: window messages, window styles, embedded resources.
> Embed your first concrete resource: an application icon.
> Specifying resources: pseudo-pointers and number strings.
> Handling WM_INITDIALOG & sending WM_SETICON.
> Controls & specifying a dialog via a resource.

This lesson’s main points:

A general window has an associated callback function (e.g. dialog procedure) that is called every time something happens to the window, and that serves as your main customization point.
Some functionality and effects, such as resizing ability, can be turned off/on via window style bits.
Windows supports embedding data, called resources, in executables and DLLs.

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Lesson 3: The textual process arguments < December 20, 2011

Filed under: c++ programming,programming,tutorial,windows api programming — Alf P. Steinbach @ 4:48 am

Contents of this lesson:
> The C++ main function signature
> Process arguments versus the standard main signature
> The command line
> The process’s current directories
> The process environment

This lesson’s main points:

The standard main arguments are ungood for serious Windows programming.
Each Windows process has multiple current directories, one per drive, just like in DOS.
Much Windows programming support code is roughly the same in many programs (think reuse).

One reaction to this posting was that it must surely be irrelevant to Windows GUI programming. Command line, main arguments? Hey?

Well that’s where it all starts, e.g. when you double-click a file to just “open” it: the program then receives the file name via a command line, which in standard C++ ends up as individual arguments to main.

And one interesting fact is that the C++ standard main signature is utterly useless for reliably transferring such file names in Windows.

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