Editorial
[author : Jonathan Erickson] #Edito
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FEATURES
Windows Apps and Exception Handlers
[author : Joseph Hlavaty]
Joe enhances his TrapMan debugging utility by adding features for displaying exception registers, dumping the exception stack, and identifying the faulting application.
Simplifying Windows Development
[author : Al Williams]
The CoolWorx toolkit Al presents here simplifies Windows application programming. The library includes an integrated event loop, encapsulation of common message-handling code, tool and status bars that automatically manage themselves, and a text-editor software component.
A Visual Basic Form Generator
[author : Wei Xiao]
This form-generator utility is a C program that converts a text file into a Visual Basic form file. In addition to handling text strings and form attributes such as font, margin, and color, the program generates text boxes, combo boxes, and check boxes.
Adding Auxiliary Views for Windows Apps
[author : Robert Rosenberg]
Robert examines how MFC supports multiple views, presenting code for implementing three types of views in an application. He also tackles the topic of customizing the titles that appear in MDI frame windows.
Creating Special-Effect Bitmaps
[author : Saurabh Dixit]
The skipping algorithms Saurabh presents here are the basis for special-effect bitmap routines for creating effects such as exploding, spiraling, sliding, curtaining, and more.
COLUMNS
Ramblings in Real Time
[author : Michael Abrash]
Contrary to popular belief, Windows can be an excellent real-time animation platform—WinG software is all it takes to support fast, double-buffered drawing on Win 3.1, Win32s, and Win32.
DTACK Revisited
[author : Hal W. Hardenberg]
Hal ponders the impact of industrial automatons, focusing on the work of Hans Moravec, who has spent the past 25 years working in the field of robotics.
Patterns and Software Design
[author : Richard Helm and Erich Gamma]
The key to software reuse in object-oriented programming may well lie in the realm of patterns. In this issue, our columnists lay the groundwork for examining this increasingly important, emerging topic.
Software and the Law
[author : Marc E. Brown]
Marc discusses the difference between software's protectable "form of expression" and its unprotectable "underlying ideas."