[GSoC] Merge winecfg and Control Panel

[Tony Zhang]

Hi everyone,

I am a senior student double majoring in Computer Science and Math at
Northern Illinois University (currently applying the CS Master Program at
NIU) and I would like to participate in merging winecfg and control panel
through the Google Summer of Code program.

I have used wine since wine 0.9 and 'm now using wine 1.3. I like the idea
that all config tools should be grouped and managed at one place, and it
would be nice to have them similar to the classical windows control panel
(like the control panel in wine 1.3).

About my programming background, I believe I know (and love) C the best. I
have not had any internships before, but I'm currently working as an
undergraduate Research Assistant at NIU. It is a Proton Computed Tomography
(Proton CT) project and the main language in use is C, so I do have some
experience of using C in a large-scale project.

I have briefly walked through Owen Rudge's code of splitting out the Desktop
Integration tab into its own control panel, but have no luck in getting a
decent understanding of it. So I'm hoping some of you can point me to some
documents that related to this task so I can have an overall understanding
of the challenges of this task.

Sincerely,
--
Tony (Chi Zhang)

[Owen Rudge]

Hi Tony,
> I have briefly walked through Owen Rudge's code of splitting out the
> Desktop Integration tab into its own control panel, but have no luck in
> getting a decent understanding of it. So I'm hoping some of you can
> point me to some documents that related to this task so I can have an
> overall understanding of the challenges of this task.

Actually creating a new control panel applet is a fairly straightforward 
task. You can look at the existing control panels (appwiz.cpl, 
inetcpl.cpl) to get an idea of what's involved, or consult MSDN for more 
information (http://tinyurl.com/6yu7cw4). If you've not got a background 
in Windows programming already, it may of course take a little longer to 
figure everything out.

More complicated is actually working out how to split up winecfg 
effectively, and how to do so in a way that doesn't result in 
unnecessary code duplication, otherwise you'll likely find it difficult 
to actually get your code into the project.

I would say that there's certainly potential for a project here, if you 
can flesh it out - I do think a unified control panel containing all of 
Wine's configuration options would be a good thing, rather than the 
current situation where options are scattered between the control panel, 
winecfg, etc. The key will be figuring out what you want to do, how 
you're going to achieve it, and making sure it will be acceptable to the 
wider Wine community.

Regards,

[Tony Zhang]

Dear Owen,

Thank you for pointing me to those information. I'll take a look at those
and try to figure out the process of making control panel applets.
Unfortunately, I have no background in Windows programming, but I do want to
get some through this project.

[Tony Zhang]

Dear Owen,
> Actually creating a new control panel applet is a fairly straightforward
> task. You can look at the existing control panels (appwiz.cpl, inetcpl.cpl)
> to get an idea of what's involved

I have looked at the two existing applets, but got a little confused by the
variable names and the organization of the files (the call chain).

I'm able to find some documents talking about how to create control panel
applet in Windows CE (haven't got time to read them through). Is that
similar to creating cpl in wine?

[Tony Zhang]

Dear Owen,
> Actually creating a new control panel applet is a fairly straightforward
> task. You can look at the existing control panels (appwiz.cpl, inetcpl.cpl)
> to get an idea of what's involved
>
> After all the searches, I still do not have an overall idea of how to

create an control panel applet. From my current understanding, if I put the
cpl (dll) file in "~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32/", wine control will
recognize it automatically, right?

If so, is there any instructions on how to build a simple applet under wine
(even one that does nothing could work for me). I'd really like to try
create and build some test applet in order to understand it better.

Sorry for taking your time. Thanks in advance.
Best,

[Vincent Povirk]

You can pretty much ignore everything in the actual C source files of
appwiz.c except the CPlApplet function. CPL_STARTWPARMSW is
unimportant, and all CPL_DBLCLK does is create a window.

The only difference from the layout of a normal Windows program is
that a control panel applet does not include its own message loop. The
caller takes care of that.

See also http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb776392%28VS.85%29.aspx