You know, if you sit down and read this stuff, there's actually a *hell* 
of a lot of switches and options in there...

Like, you'd think creating a window would just be "hey, please create a 
window with this title please". But no. Apart from being able to specify 
the title, icon, and initial size and place, you can do a whole heap of 
other things:

- You can disable the close button.

- You can adjust the border style.

- You can remove the titlebar completely.

- You can enable or disable resizing the window.

- You can add that little help-icon thingy. You know, the one where the 
user clicks the help button, clicks something in the window and gets an 
error message saying "sorry, no help available".

- You can select "keep on top".

- You can select horisontal and/or vertical scrollbars.

- You can select whether whatever the window obscures is cached for fast 
redraw.

- You can enable file drag/drop. (I'm not kidding...)

- You can do that thing that floating toolbars have, where the titlebar 
is rendered smaller than usual and the window won't resize.

- You can have the window initially minimised or maximised.

- You can make it so the window can't become the active window. (I.e., 
you can see it, but can't select it.)

- You can "open" the window but have it invisible initially. (Presumably 
you'll make it visible at some point - again presumably once you've 
finished adding controls to it.)

This not including all the low-level stuff like what clipping to do, 
which drawing context to use, which window messages to send, and a bunch 
of other stuff I don't even comprehend yet.

And you thought you could just OPEN a window... ha!

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> You know, if you sit down and read this stuff, there's actually a *hell* 
> of a lot of switches and options in there...

Yes it's great isn't it? :-)

> And you thought you could just OPEN a window... ha!

To be fair, you can just pretty much just use all the defaults (ie use none 
of those flags) and you'll get something resembling a "normal" window.  I 
guess they designed it that way.

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>> You know, if you sit down and read this stuff, there's actually a 
>> *hell* of a lot of switches and options in there...
> 
> Yes it's great isn't it? :-)

It'd be greater if the documentation were a little more illunimating - 
although it's not too bad.

>> And you thought you could just OPEN a window... ha!
> 
> To be fair, you can just pretty much just use all the defaults (ie use 
> none of those flags) and you'll get something resembling a "normal" 
> window.  I guess they designed it that way.

Yeah, to some extent.

To another extent, there's a fair few layers of backwards compatibility 
in there to wade through.

Also, the Win32 concept of a "window" is not the same thing as what you 
or I would consider a "window". (E.g., a checkbox is a "window".) Makes 
things interesting...

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> Also, the Win32 concept of a "window" is not the same thing as what you or 
> I would consider a "window". (E.g., a checkbox is a "window".) Makes 
> things interesting...

Yes, you need to get your head around that otherwise you're going to be 
*very* confused when it comes to adding icons and stuff to your "window"...

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scott wrote:
>> Also, the Win32 concept of a "window" is not the same thing as what 
>> you or I would consider a "window". (E.g., a checkbox is a "window".) 
>> Makes things interesting...
> 
> Yes, you need to get your head around that otherwise you're going to be 
> *very* confused when it comes to adding icons and stuff to your "window"...

The fun thing is, half the stuff is talking about *actual* windows. 
(E.g., only an actual window has a title bar and a menu.) And half of 
the stuff is talking about widgets. (E.g., would you like a drop shadow 
around that?) And it's not always clear which is which.

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Invisible wrote:
> The fun thing is, half the stuff is talking about *actual* windows. 

Qt did better. Everything is a widget, and windows (main window, toolbar 
window, dock window) are kinds of widgets.

Maybe Win32 inherited the terminology from X10/X11?

Of course, when you get actual OO with actual inheritance and such, it 
becomes a lot easier.

w = new Window();
w.hasTitlebar(true);
w.canTakeFocus(false);
w.hasHelpIconThingie(true);
w.backgroundColor(white);
w.open();

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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>> The fun thing is, half the stuff is talking about *actual* windows. 
> 
> Qt did better. Everything is a widget, and windows (main window, toolbar 
> window, dock window) are kinds of widgets.

Yeah. AWT did this. Smalltalk did this. Most people did this, actually. 
(Except Tk. :-P )

> Maybe Win32 inherited the terminology from X10/X11?

Yeah, perhaps.

> Of course, when you get actual OO with actual inheritance and such, it 
> becomes a lot easier.

For sure. ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> (Except Tk. :-P )

Well, Tk called it a toplevel, and called the things inside a toplevel 
widgets, so it wasn't too confusing. I.e., Tk didn't call anything just a 
"window".

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Invisible wrote:

> 
> Also, the Win32 concept of a "window" is not the same thing as what you 
> or I would consider a "window". (E.g., a checkbox is a "window".) Makes 
> things interesting...

*Everything* is a window.  That is, if it's somehow graphical and 
something you might normally stick on a window, it's a subclass of "Window."

--SKS

-- 
#macro T(E,N)sphere{x,.4rotate z*E*60translate y*N pigment{wrinkles scale
.3}finish{ambient 1}}#end#local I=0;#while(I<5)T(I,1)T(1-I,-1)#local I=I+
1;#end camera{location-5*z}plane{z,37 pigment{granite color_map{[.7rgb 0]
[1rgb 1]}}finish{ambient 2}}//                                   TenMoons

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>> Also, the Win32 concept of a "window" is not the same thing as what 
>> you or I would consider a "window". (E.g., a checkbox is a "window".) 
>> Makes things interesting...
> 
> *Everything* is a window.  That is, if it's somehow graphical and 
> something you might normally stick on a window, it's a subclass of 
> "Window."

The usual term is "widget". That way, if you mean "any component", you 
say widget, and if you mean "thing that looks like a window", you say 
"window".

Under the Win32 terminology, there's no way to talk about real windows 
specifically.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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