From: cterry AT plinet DOT com (Charles Terry)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Re: Interfacing to a MS-Windows application: How ?
Date: Sun, 26 Apr 1998 15:34:46 GMT
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On 23 Apr 1998 09:09:22 GMT, hat AT se-46 DOT wpa DOT wtb DOT tue DOT nl () wrote:

>[Posted and mailed]
>
>In article <9803238933 DOT AA893359537 AT cressoft DOT comsats DOT net DOT pk>,
>	"altaf.aali" <altaf DOT aali AT cressoft-khi DOT com DOT pk> writes:
>>      
>> 
>> There is a libwin for DJGPP which may provide a solution to your
>> problem. The link to it is at the following page (SET's DJGPP
>> programming links)
>>
>> http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/6552/dlinks.html
>
>From that links-page:
>
>Libwin 0.1.1 by Rich Dawe. The aim of the library is to allow DJGPP 
>programs to make better use of the Windows environment. Thus, it 
>includes clipboard access, user information, version information,
>low-level device driver (VxD), DOS box and virtual machine titling and 
>registry functionality. GPL.
>
>I remember seeing this lib, but I don't understand what good it does to
>me. The things mentioned in this description don't seem useful for my 
>problem. (But I may be wrong of course).
>
>Let me give some more details of the type of problems we have regarding 
>interfacing with a DJGPP program:
>
>Our DJGPP program is a simulation-program for a factory. Basically, this 
>program simulates the behaviour of that factory.
>You provide input, and some control-parameters, and the simulation program
>produces results.
>
>The simulation program should cooperate with MS-Windows apps, like Excel
>and Access. There are 2 types of problems here:
>
>1) Excel should provide input and control-parameters, then start the
>   simulation, then after execution read the results and analyse them.
>   Excel functions as a front-end before our program in this setup.
>
>   something like 'system("simulation.exe")' will probably work here
>   as suggested by Eli Zaretskii (thanks !)
>
>2) The DJGPP simulation-program needs a MS-win app to do some
>   calculations for it. For example, we need to lookup a value from a large
>   MS-Access data-base (or from an Excel spread-sheet).
>
>   How to do this is not clear to me. Can I use Libwin for this purpose ?
>
>
>Albert
What you trying to do is exactly what activex controls in VisBasic are
for.  A problem I see Is that the internal format for an access
database is not documented,  so without running Access to get
information contained in it you've got a great hacker project.  I
would consider the rsxntdj package,which would create a windows app
which could run the dll's that will run the microsoft office programs
and give the ability to get data from them.  You could then either do
the simulation within that program or write the data to a file and
spawn a dos program.

I'll qualify my remarks by saying - 
1)I've just glanced at the rsx package but my impression is that it
would work.
2) Coming up with the documentation to interact with the dll's and
translating the calls out of the particular documentation's pseudo C
to straight C would probably be alot of work also.  The documentation
for a current release visual C package would probably be very
informative- for instance the faq from the microsoft visual c++
newsgroup.
At the risk of being heretical I would write the interface in Vbasic
then shell out into whatever mean processing program you write,
if thats an available option.
Charles Terry