Re: Nonsence about MFC

On Mon, 20 Sep 2004 03:04:12 UTC, riplin@Azonic.co.nz (Richard) wrote:

> Robert Wagner <robert@wagner.net.yourmammaharvests> wrote
> 
>
> Yes, you could well be completely wrong.
>
> According to Bob Wolfe, posting on this very group (so it can be
> determined easily for those that prefer to use facts rather than
> opinions):
>
> """ sp2.dll screen handler is written in C """
>
> Both SP2 and Dailog system date from before MFC was available.  This
> makes your claim unsupportable.  Even a cursory glance at facts should
> have shown you that it wasn't viable.
> 
>
> You don't seem to know much about MFC, or indeed Windows at all.  MFC
> is just a thin OO (some might say: sorta OO) wrapper around the
> standard Windows controls. They all look the same because they are
> _Windows_, regardless of whether they are MFC.

The original dialog system (char and gui) was written in COBOL and
used the PANELS (char) or PANELS2 (gui) interface to call standard Win
or PM (that's OS/2 for the OS deprived) controls. You could do your
own calls to panels2 to do GUI stuff without requiring dialog system.
The panels and panels2 modules were also written in COBOL. In those
days Microfocus really ate their own dogfood.

Dialog system was a nice cross platform system for OS/2 and Window up
Workbench 4.0, after that the NetExpress products went (mostly)
Windows only. We wrote the Grandmaster II and Grandmaster Suite
Payroll products using dialog system.

The controls, of course looked like whatever the controls looked like
as provided by Windows or OS/2. Same code that was run on OS/2,
Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 always  picked up the "native" look for the
OS.

If you want to do the work you can write calls to the base API on
Windows or OS/2 to use the standard controls and dialogs. Just call
the appropriate API, the same way you do in C or C++ (more or less
according to the language syntax).

Adn once the OO code was available for MF COBOL you could call Dialog
system from within OO stuff the same way you could call it before.

--
Lorne Sunley