Date: Mon, 14 Jun 1993 12:25:49 -0600
From: NEVES RICHARD K <neves AT anchor DOT cs DOT colorado DOT edu>
To: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Subject: Windows 3.1 programming


I'm curious.  What are the technical barriers in getting djgpp
generated code to communicate with the windows environment?

This would be trivial if djgpp could create DLLs, but I think this is
next to impossible:

DLLs are pretty weird things.  They use the stack of the calling
application.  They have 16 bit interfaces.  The sdk manuals mention
special prologue/epilogue code.  Maybe someone more knowledgeable
knows if this is even possible.

Another possibility:

Apparantly Microsoft's win32s is a thunk layer between a 32 bit
compiler (the NT compiler) and the 16 bit windows api.  I wonder what
it would entail to get djgpp to interface with this win32s.dll...
Win32s offers a subset of the NT api on windows for those who haven't
read the rags.

DDE:

Maybe a special library which allows djgpp to use the dynamic data
exchange protocol could be created.  This would at least allow a djgpp
application to communicate with a windows application.


I'm just wondering if people have done anything with djgpp in this
spirit.  I would be very interested in hearing about it.  It would be
great if a windows interface could be put on some djgpp code (such as
visual basic call djgpp dlls).

penny for your thoughts,
Rich