Jalaj P. Jha » WinAPI

The Blog Revisited – 5

Jalaj — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 12:34:44 +0000

By now I had jumped into using WinAPI function to the level I never imagined that I would get into... I always had some queries as how not to make rectangle forms etc that always got answer that can only happen on C++... was it totally true... NO that's what I realized when dug into MSDN library and the answer was manipulating Device Context, the virtual device that we always write on to in Windows. For starting on it see WinAPI : Starting with Device Context

How do we make a form transparent, now doing it seemed like a child's play. See it for yourself at WinAPI : Making Form Transparent or how to make it translucent at WinAPI : Making Forms Translucent.

Can you hide or show minimize or maximize button after a form has loaded. No if you are not using WinAPI functions. Modifying Minimize, Maximize buttons during runtime shows how to do it.

You might have tasted Mint with a hole... have you seen a form with a hole? See it here at Form With a Hole

While reading about different I came across various terminologies as
Characters, Glyphs and Fonts... how do they differ is what is discussed in the post.

What is Unicode know about it in Unicode Standard and what are the stuff like UTF-8 etc read it here at The Unicode Storage Issues

What is a timer control that we often use in developing applications that require some action to be performed at regular intervals? It is an implementation of a few WinAPI functions that instruct operating system to callback based on some condition. Learn about this and other WinAPI CallBack functions, Where’s TimerProc Function?, More WinAPI functions for CallBack

I have worked for years on computing in Hindi Language and my last effort was to create a generic program to convert text written in various non-unicode fonts into Unicode. The project did not finish but successfully implemented a few fonts including popular Shusha font. Learn about it in Shusha font to Unicode Conversion

WinAPI functions GetPiixel and SetPixel allows you get info on color present at a particular co-ordinate on a device context, or set the desired color. For details read WinAPI : SetPixel Function and
WinAPI : GetPixel Function

The Blog Revisited – 2

Jalaj — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 13:10:00 +0000

MSXML component provides you with everything that you need to read,parse or write an XML file However when you write an XML file the file contains no indentation etc to make it readable. While working on code to introduce indents in an XML file I wrote a general component to do it easily which is described in Easy way to writing XML.

I worked extensively in FoxPro 2.6 for DOS for years. A most common and fatal error that I encountered was "Not a Database File" error, which simply means that you lost your data and needed to restore from backup. In fact the database was recoverable if I had known the DBF file format specification. I got into it and developed a software that recovers files with such errors. Low Level Handling of DBF Files describes the DBF file specification and an application to read DBF file headers. Not a Database File Error in DBF describes an application which recovers data from a corrupted database file.

Event logs are a good place to log errors etc from within an application. Event Logging in Windows describes how to use WinAPI functions to achieve the same.

I find myself much comfortable with Google when looking for info, thanks to the its advanced feature. While you can always use the “Advanced Search” link on Google, Advanced Searching with Google describes it for you.

When I first learnt Windows (3.1) the first thing that fancied me was the INI files. Working with them was fun. The fun continued with Registry in Windows 95. The Windows Registry,
Getting Started with Registry describes basics of Registry.

When the blog started I had planned to put in posts related to my personal details. The posts FlashBack, The BBC Micro Computer/, My time with BBC Micro, Dry Run, The world is a small place were for the same.

That’s all for the post.

The Blog Revisited – 1

Jalaj — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 10:10:32 +0000

This blog is nearing its one year of existence. Since I had mostly worked with VBA (Visual basic for Applications) earlier, I was exploring the power of Visual Basic. Then a thought came to my mind "Is this learning too going to fade out from my mind with time as happened to my earlier learning?". Earlier I had worked and developed on various applications and tools for CAD, 3-D renderings, morphing, photo/video editing, programming, all for fun and learning. But as of now I have lost most of the source codes saved in 1.2" and 1.44" floppies and Harddisks that crashed.

And then I registered with wordpress.com and decided to post everything that I learnt on it. This did continue for a short time period but then with a break in learning, the blog moved on to become another news and reviews blog and lost out.

And today I decided to revive the blog with a revisit to it's old posts and in the meantime planning for future. Here is what appeared on this blog since December 12th 2006.

The blog started with a post on it's goal namely Hello world!

Next I started with a problem. I needed to open a single instance of an application when opened files associated with this application. Working on this application made eager to learn more on WinAPI functions that for me was still uncharted (leaving the copy/paste that many do). This post spanned three posts Adding File Names to a ListBox, Adding File Names to a ListBox - 2, Adding File Names to a ListBox - 3

Windows messages had the prime role in the above application and now it was my turn to look deep into it and thus the next post More on SendMessage

One of the application that I always wanted to know for how it worked was password revealer. While studying Windows Messages it occurred to me that I had got the answer to it and it developed into an application described in Revealing Hidden Texts

In my early days of surfing internet I used to download most of the site pages using software as Teleport and now that I wanted to make a Bot app, I wanted to get to the most efficient way of extracting urls from page and that was Regular Expressions. Next two posts were related to them titled Regular Expressions in VB and Regular Expressions - A Primer.

The now I started working for the bot app that I described just above. This application spanned two posts Creating a Bot App - 1, Creating a Bot App - 2.

That's all for this post.