Back at it

[donkey]

With the pressures of work easing off for the winter I will be sticking to my winter ritual of prowling the forum again. Sorry for the almost complete absence over the last few months.

Edgar

[dedndave]

it'll be good to have you back, Edgar   :U
we have missed you   :8)

[donkey]

Thanks Dave,

I'll be easing back in by looking at what I missed over the last 6 months and should hopefully begin work on the Windows 8 headers early next week.

Edgar

[Bill Cravener]

Hi Edgar, missed ya buddy, glad you're back! :bg

[Ramon Sala]

Glad to have you back!

Ramon

[FlySky]

wb donkey! :U

[donkey]

Been looking through the headers from the Windows 8 preview and I hope to have something in about a month that will encompass the "big 4" of Shell, User, Common controls and Kernel (WinNt.h) plus dependencies. The others should come along slowly over a longer period. I'm not sure when Windows 8 is scheduled for release but since the copy I am using is pre-beta I'm under the assumption that it will still be quite some time. I hope to install the OS on a box that I have lying around unused then I can see if its even possible to access the new Metro interface from assembly, if it appears possible I will try to get the headers for that done immediately after the "big 4".

If anyone uses other headers on a regular basis let me know and I'll put them on the list of ones to upgrade.

The identifier for Windows 8 will be NTDDI_WIN8 it will be added to Windef.h when the first headers are complete.

[donkey]

With a very few exceptions there so far doesn't appear to be much added to Windows 8 regarding the flat API, it seems that almost all of the added functionality is .NET (which I don't do headers for) and COM (which I do). There are a lot of deprecated API functions, mostly in Kernel32 and User32. Unfortunately the vast majority of new interfaces for Metro style apps are not in defined in the Windows 8 headers yet, at least not in the developers preview version that I have. There are a few interfaces that are in the new set of headers and I will add them as time permits but for now I only have the shell header for the flat API left and we'll be up to speed on Windows 8. I should be able to upload the headers and API filters before Christmas.

I haven't bothered to install the OS on a test bed yet but I should get around to it next week, I'm hoping that the build tools with the OS preview have more complete headers.

[anunitu]

Donkey,I have heard different opinions about Win8..Do you think it will be an improvment on Win7,and hopefully not a repeat of vista.
I am still using win2000 so haven't used even XP except on my box controlling my printer. I am thinking of buying a new main system,why I ask about Win8.

Any info on its usefulness would help. I have read that Win7 is very good.

[donkey]

Well, as far as I can tell there won't be much of a difference except for a Metro UI skin over Windows 7 to bring it in line with the Windows Phone 7.5 user interface. There are a few new API functions (around 200 or so) and some of the "safe" inline functions have been added (for example qsort_s) but as for the WOW factor, studying the API there isn't much that's exciting. As for deprecated API functions, there's not that many and they are really obscure ones so the flat API has survived another version of Windows. I have a feeling that the lstrxxxx functions will be deprecated very soon since they will now throw an error in VS10, that's usually the first sign that they'll be gone though I think they'll still be around in the Windows 8 release it is probably the last time we'll see them except as a wrapper for SafeString functions. It looks like there is now support for ARM processors since some of the additions to winnt.h have to do with that processor, they will be left out of the headers (GoAsm is an x86 assembler). From what I've gathered so far the only way to access the new features of Windows 8 will be through COM, the additions in that regard seem extensive, so we're going to have to buy a lot of Advil.

Of course, I haven't put together my Windows 8 machine yet and I'm still going through the hundreds of new COM interfaces that have been added so I'll reserve a definitive opinion until that is done.

[anunitu]

Thanks Donkey..Am I becoming an OLD fart with a paranoid fear of the future? It does seem as we age,that change becomes something  we find hard to embrace. Being that I have allways been a tech follower and loved each and every advance,this lack of Enthusiasm now bothers me,but then I think if I now feel this,what of the average person that always had a secret fear of tech.

[zemtex]

I do not believe "change" is related to age. I think that people hate change because it is time consuming, it is sort of irrational, it demands effort to replace what previously worked well. I do not believe anybody like change, change is evil in itself, there is nothing good about change, but it can lead to good things later. Point is, that there are plenty of reasons to hate change and it has little to do with age.

When younger people grow up they adapt to the new things that you didn't adapt to and they get credit for being able to adapt better than yourself because they are young, this is a lie. They adapt because they never adapted to anything before and they too are just as much immune to change as you are.