| From: | A-Scotland,ex1 |
| Date: | 15 Aug 2001 at 17:10:04 |
| Subject: | [amiga-c] RE: Win 32 API (was: Re: GCC and exceptions...) |
On Wed, 15 Aug 2001 AD, Allan Odgaard wrote:
>
> > quite a lot with the Win32-API (the API in itself isn't that bad
> > really, and usually you just hide it behind some class :)...
>
> Actually I was also positively surprised by their API. Many functions
> had long descriptive names with correct usage of upper and lowercase
> letters :-)
>
> What does nag me is that they seem to introduce a new API every half
> year and give it yet anohter TLA (three letter acronym) like COM, DLL,
> ATL, MFC, OLE, COM+, ActiveX,
> Direct[Show|Play|Audio|Graphics|3D|Whatever), GDI etc.
I found that I could not handle the requirements of downloading the
latest and greatest patches every two minutes and re-reading the
developer guide every two weeks (just in case the recommended way to
perform X was now through an extension to API Y...)
Usually just so that their development leads could go on to have
successful careers as trainers and consultants. Bah.
If their developers weren't actively encouraged to compete against
each other and to hide their internal APIs, then we would have an easier
job coding on Windoze. Let's face it - have an API that's well documented
and changes less than once a week is a big bonus ;)
> And don't get me started with ComCtrl.dll, which seems to be
> the native
> GUI... arg... this stuff is horrible! I realize why all programs just
> use skins, cause even though opening a window is a little
> more advanced
> than OpenWindowTags() then it's certainly much easier to open one and
> use DirectDraw/GDI to draw in this window than figure out any of the
> GUI stuff offered by Windows...
>
> I ended up downloading the Windows port of Qt and use this. It's not
> MUI, but at least I can understand it ;-) and wtf is this thing they
> have on the PC about actually painting the GUI??? arg... that explain
> why no windows can be resized, but even though creating a GUI in an
> editor may for the beginner seem easier to grasp then one sure can't
> develop serious applications like this...
I have developed far better GUIs in J++ than I have been able to in
VB or in VC. The simple reason was that resizing some things seems
to be broken in VB and VC. (J++ is horrible anyway and is proprietary,
so I can't really us it anyway :)
You'll also find that things like the web/explorer OLE thingy that
you can imbed in your GUI has different properties under each of the
visual studio development environments. eg. You can't resize it properly
under VB, you can't point it to a file:// properly using J++ (it
throws warnings). You can also point it at a location inside
a CAB file, but unfortunately the way to do this isn't documented...)
I think that if such an inconsistent development platform existed for
any other architecture then the developers themselves would work on
replacements. This is impossible for Win because some internal API
stuff is still secret.
>> But that would bring us off-topic in this group, wouldn't it? :)
>
> Well, if we can discuss the Kyoto agreement then I gues we can also
> discuss C programming in a non-Amiga environment ;-)
Heaven forbid! ;)
Amiga C programmers should take notice of the difficulties in programming
Windows - the main one is that the API is a crock but also that cross
development is nearly impossible in some cases due to inconsistencies.
(Not like on the Amiga where you can look .o files generated by nearly
any compiler...)
When programming the Amiga, sometimes you even get "good practice" and
"bad practice" examples, in the RKMs and AutoDocs, you're likely to be
warned about compatibility issues in advance and the recommendations don't
change every 2/3 months.
I hope that this trend continues with the AmigaDE! (Not that I've bought
a copy yet - I'm far too busy to use it right now :(
Regards,
** My views do not necessarily reflect the views of Agilent! **
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