RE: Wintab.dll technical issues.

[Patrik Stridvall]

> Firstly a quick note:
> I have opened a bug for implementation of wintab.dll (Bug No. 1160)
>
> Now the questions:
>
> 1: Writing stubs.
> I'll be taking up Patrik Stridvall's offer to write stubs for 
> anyone new 
> to wine development.

Yes, I'm working on it right now.
Will probably not finish tonight though.
> One question about stubs:
> What's the wine policy on stub return values?

No general policy. It depends.
> Should a stub always return an error?

Normally stubs should indicate error (return NULL, FALSE or similar)
and do SetLastError(ERROR_NOT_IMPLEMENTED).
> Should/Can it return success?

In some cases indicating success (return TRUE or similar), even
though it not strictly correct, might be a good idea. It depends.

Lying to the application should be avoided of course but sometimes
it is nessary.
> 2: Testing wintab.dll in Win98.
> wintab.dll is quite complex for what it does.

I guess you mean wintab32.dll.
wintab.dll is the 16 bit variant AFAICS.
> Therefore the only practical way to implement it is
> to work on the functions and communication models that are
> used by the apps I want it to support.

Probably.
> To do this, I need some tool that can log the function calls and
> parameters to the DLL, while wunning Win98.The logging must 
> be able to 
> let the
> programmer choose elements from data stuctures in 
> parameters/retvals to log.
> Any ideas????

There are no good tools to do this AFAIK. But if you find any
I'm very intrested.
> I've attempted to use apis32 and built a wintab.fnl file for 
> wintab.dll.
> Unfortunately apis32 doen't allow the logging of the contents of data 
> structs.

Yes. APIS32 is the best AFAIK and it sucks pretty bad IMHO.
> I would also like to know experinces with Spy++.
> Wintab can send it's own custom messages, so I'm wondering how good
> Spy++ is at detecting custom messages?
>
> I've used it many times before, but only to examine standard windows 
> messages.

No idea, haven't used it for years.
> 3: Coding standards.
> I haven't found any coding standards associated with wine.
> This is particularly important, as I'll be writing new source files.
> Can someone point me to the standards?

We have none. Decide for yourself. However please do not choose anything
to unlik anything else in Wine.

Wintab.dll technical issues.

[Robert North]

Patrik Stridvall ps-at-leissner.se |Wine Mailing Lists| wrote:
> > Firstly a quick note:
> > I have opened a bug for implementation of wintab.dll (Bug No. 1160)
> >
> > Now the questions:
> >
> > 1: Writing stubs.
> > I'll be taking up Patrik Stridvall's offer to write stubs for 
> > anyone new 
> > to wine development.
>
> Yes, I'm working on it right now.
> Will probably not finish tonight though.
> > One question about stubs:
> > What's the wine policy on stub return values?

Thanks for all the notes on stubs.
Extremely useful.
> > 2: Testing wintab.dll in Win98.
> > wintab.dll is quite complex for what it does.
>
> I guess you mean wintab32.dll.
> wintab.dll is the 16 bit variant AFAICS.

yes. wintab32.dll
Always confused by both dlls being described in the wintab.h file.
> > Therefore the only practical way to implement it is
> > to work on the functions and communication models that are
> > used by the apps I want it to support.
>
> Probably.
> > To do this, I need some tool that can log the function calls and
> > parameters to the DLL, while wunning Win98.The logging must 
> > be able to 
> > let the
> > programmer choose elements from data stuctures in 
> > parameters/retvals to log.
> > Any ideas????
>
> There are no good tools to do this AFAIK. But if you find any
> I'm very intrested.

I've resolved the situation by making a wrapper DLL which is tracable
during debug, and will dump to file too.
The winab toolkit made this suprisingly easy. It contains macros which
can reduce the coding of a wrapper dll immensely.

I was intending to release this logging code to the community, but I
don't think it's generic enough.
> > I've attempted to use apis32 and built a wintab.fnl file for 
> > wintab.dll.
> > Unfortunately apis32 doen't allow the logging of the contents of data 
> > structs.
>
> Yes. APIS32 is the best AFAIK and it sucks pretty bad IMHO.

Yeah, crashed my machine every time I closed it!
Not going to pay $17 for something that does that.
> > 3: Coding standards.
> > I haven't found any coding standards associated with wine.
> > This is particularly important, as I'll be writing new source files.
> > Can someone point me to the standards?
>
> We have none. Decide for yourself. However please do not choose anything
> to unlik anything else in Wine.

Or maybe many, as implied by slightly heated coding thread :-(

Many thanks
     -Rob.