Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!usc!apple!oliveb!amdahl!rtech!markh
From: markh@rtech.rtech.com (Mark Hanner)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: Debugging Windows
Message-ID: <3229@rtech.rtech.com>
Date: 25 Jul 89 02:37:26 GMT
References: <30097@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <106580054@hpcvlx.HP.COM> <3220@rtech.rtech.com> <8776@june.cs.washington.edu>
Reply-To: markh@rtech.UUCP (Mark Hanner)
Organization: Relational Technology Inc, Alameda CA
Lines: 37

In article <8776@june.cs.washington.edu> roper@june.cs.washington.edu (Michael Roper) writes:
>> There is a reason that there are not very many windows 
>> applications: it's very hard to make them work ... on 
>> every bizarre configuration of PC in the world.
>
>Could you elaborate on this?  What problems have you had
>in this regard?  Of course, machine-independence is one
>of Microsoft's biggest selling points in promoting the
>development of applications for the Windows environment.
>So I'd be interested to hear about yours or anyone else's
>experiences to the contrary.


Yes, windows allows you to write applications that run on a wide range of
displays and pc configurations, but the problem is that it is up to the
programmer to do it right. Windows forces you to write the code that 
sets up the mappings for the video system, and unless you do it right, 
your program will probably only work for a small set of video cards. 
I've also run into subtle problems running on expanded memory set ups
(which i could not fix because i have but one development system without
the features that cause the problem; if you want to test your apps sufficiently
i don't see how you can do it without having alot of hardware....).

I think my main point is that there is a great leap from programming in 
a single-threaded terminal environment to any "object-oriented" window 
manager, and the development support tools simply aren't there (symdeb is 
barely usable for dos applications, but is ludicrous for windows. i want
a combination of spy (with decodings of the messages) and codeview...).
until the tools are there, building windows application will continue
to be part alchemy.

cheers,
mark hanner
-- 
markh@rtech.COM
"Crass generalizations may be justified by admitting 10 exceptions."
			-- marnie applegate