henrik@abblund.se (09/07/90)
Which are the major Graphics Programming Interface differences between Presentation Manager and Windows 3.0? Is the interface to Windows 3.0 a subset of the interface to PM. Henrik Paalsson henrik@abblund.se ABB Corporate Research Lund Sweden
rommel@lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de (Kai-Uwe Rommel) (09/08/90)
In article <1990Sep07.123451.24798@abblund.se> henrik@abblund.se writes: >Which are the major Graphics Programming Interface differences between >Presentation Manager and Windows 3.0? Is the interface to Windows 3.0 >a subset of the interface to PM. No it is very different. If you restrict yourself to some basic graphics, such as lines, circles and not very much more, you can write you a small library to emulate one system on the other. But when you begin using some advanced things, like color bitmaps in memory device contexts, for example, you don't have big chances for portable code. I had a small EYES program laying around (which tracks the mouse pointers position) for Windows from someone other which I enhanced a bit. I started to convert it to PM but stopped this after some hours. It was *MUCH* easier to rewrite it from scratch. Periodically there appear "portatbility" articles for Windows/PM/Mac in the MS Systems Journal or elsewhere but I had always the impression that 1. the methods work only for simple programs 2. and are very slow. The Software Migration Kit from MS should allow you to port Windows apps to PM with special libraries but for one or two programmers maintaining a Windows app it is rather difficult to create such two-system-programs themselves without such support. I did not yet see the SMK but heard rumors that it is included with the WIndows 3.0 SDK. Is this true? Microsoft Germany told me on Thursday that it will take another two or three weeks before I will get the SDK 3.0 update. Somtimes I have the impression to live on the back side of the moon in Germany :-( Kai Uwe Rommel -- /* Kai Uwe Rommel * Munich * rommel@lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de */
spolsky-joel@cs.yale.edu (Joel Spolsky) (09/08/90)
In article <4335@tuminfo1.lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de> rommel@lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de (Kai-Uwe Rommel) writes: > >The Software Migration Kit from MS should allow you to port Windows apps >to PM with special libraries but for one or two programmers maintaining >a Windows app it is rather difficult to create such two-system-programs >themselves without such support. I did not yet see the SMK but heard >rumors that it is included with the WIndows 3.0 SDK. Is this true? No, the SDK includes a coupon to buy the Software Migration Kit for $150. However you should beware; the SMK in its current state is in "alpha" state; it has hundreds if not thousands of bugs and hardly ever works. It is also MUCH slower than native Windows apps, like 2-3 times slower, not just 10% slower. I would tend to shy away from this non-product for a long time. OS/2 Version 2.0, says Bill Gates, will run Windows Applications unmodified. For this reason it might be a long time before OS/2 2.0 is really out.... Joel Spolsky spolsky@cs.yale.edu Talk Hard. disclaimer: i speak for nobody!