Can I get COBOL to look in a mirror?...

Hello Everyone,

I posted this question last sunday in the afternoon, but for some
reason or another, google.com never posted my question on the
C.L.C group, I don't know why. Lets try again.

I want to compare between two fonts and choose one of them as the
default font of my graphical window ---- so I have to make two
consecutive calls into the win32 API's, and retrieve the needed
informations about both fonts in a pre-defined font structure.

Classically, I would make one call to collect the first set of
information about the first font, move these information from the
array and into a temporary holding storage area (working storage),
before I can make another call to get the second set of
information about the second font respectively.

Alternatively, I could duplicate the fonts structure and assign
a different name for each array, make the calls successively and
analyze the contents of both arrays to determine the difference.
however, I would like to propose a new wrinkle for a pipeDream,
that should eliminate the duplicate codes, and the superfluous
steps aforeMentioned to solve this comparison dilemma.

First, I would declare two variables as pointers to the same font
structure in the linkage & local-storage section, implement the
win32 API's calls as recursive functions, which should force the
runtime system to automatically, generate a separate mirror image
of the font structure for each subsequent call. Nonetheless, the
main hurdle with this strategy is: How to reference each mirror
image when evaluating between the members of the two structures??.

Please consider the following skeleton program to understand what
I am talking about. Hopefully, you have a rabbit in a hat or
perhaps a tweak to efficiently optimize this function.

Regards, Kellie.


*>-------  Cobol comparison function   -------<*

Identification Division.
program-ID.    Mirror.
author.        Kellie Fitton.

Working-Storage Section.
01 TEXTMETRIC is typeDef.
02  tmHeight             LONG.
02  tmAscent             LONG.
02  tmDescent            LONG.
02  tmInternalLeading    LONG.
02  tmExternalLeading    LONG.
02  tmAveCharWidth       LONG.
02  tmMaxCharWidth       LONG.
02  tmWeight             LONG.
02  tmOverhang           LONG.
02  tmDigitizedAspectX   LONG.
02  tmDigitizedAspectY   LONG.
02  tmFirstChar          pic x(64).
02  tmLastChar           pic x(64).
02  tmDefaultChar        pic x(64).
02  tmBreakChar          pic x(64).
02  tmItalic             WORD.
02  tmUnderlined         WORD.
02  tmStruckOut          WORD.
02  tmPitchAndFamily     WORD.
02  tmCharSet            WORD.

01  hSystemFont             pic s9(9) comp-5 value 0.
01  hNewFont                pic s9(9) comp-5 value 0.
01  hWindowFont             pic s9(9) comp-5 value 0.
01  MyCounter               pic  9(9) comp-5 value 0.
01  MyMirrorImage           pic x(16) value low-values.

Local-Storage Section.
01  MyMirrorImage1          TEXTMETRIC.

Linkage Section.
01  MyMirrorImage2          TEXTMETRIC.

Procedure Division.
0001-main.
move hSystemFont     to hWindowFont
move MyMirrorImage1  to MyMirrorImage
call "MyArrayImage" using MyMirrorImage1

if tmHeight (MyMirrorImage1) not equal
tmHeight (MyMirrorImage2)
call winapi "SelectObject" using
by value hDC
by value hNewFont
end-call
end-if
stop run


entry "MyArrayImage" using MyMirrorImage2
call winapi "SelectObject" using
by value hDC
by value hWindowFont
end-call
call winapi "GetTextMetrics" using
by value     hDC
by reference MyMirrorImage
end-call
perform until MyCounter = 1
move hNewFont        to hWindowFont
move MyMirrorImage2  to MyMirrorImage
add 1                to MyCounter
call "MyArrayImage" using MyMirrorImage2
end-perform
exit program

end program Mirror.

> Classically, I would make one call to collect the first set of
> information about the first font, move these information from the
> array and into a temporary holding storage area (working storage),
> before I can make another call to get the second set of
> information about the second font respectively.

> however, I would like to propose a new wrinkle ...
> eliminate the duplicate codes, and the superfluous
> steps aforeMentioned to solve this comparison dilemma.

And exactly what would be wrong with having an array of TEXTMETRICs and
an array of fonts and using a loop to read all the fonts required
(whether that be 2 or 99).

01  Fonts-to-compare.
03  hSystemFont        ..
03  hNewFont          ..
..
03  end-of-fonts             PIC S9(9) COMP-5 VALUE -1.
01  Font-redf REDEFINES Fonts-to-Compare.
03 hFont                          .... OCCURS ??.

01  Font-TextMetrics.
03  FontMetrics                OCCURS ??.
05   FontData            TEXTMETRIC.
...

PERFORM VARYING fonNumber FROM 1 BY 1
UNTIL hFont(fontNumber) = -1
CALL ... USING hDC hFont(fontNumber)
CALL ... USING hDC FontMetrics(fontNumber)

END-PERFORM

IF ( tmHeight(1) NOT = tmHeight(2) )
..



> if tmHeight (MyMirrorImage1) not equal
>    tmHeight (MyMirrorImage2)

How is that supposed to work ?  Did you mean tmHeight OF MymirrorImagex
?

Richard,

for every call I render to the win32 API, I must capture the returned
data for all the
members of the array, thus, I need a storage block for each array to
hold my data
temporarily, before I can make the comparison between the desired
fonts.

I want the runtime system to automatically create that storage block
for each array,
based on the reference pointers that I have declared to point at the
structures. So,
MyMirrorImage1 would have its own storage block for a single copy of an
array,
which I can use it as subscript or a pointer, to uniquely identify an
array of fonts.

Yes, tmHeight of MyMirrorImageX.

Regards, Kellie.