Path: utzoo!censor!becker!geac!jtsv16!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!usc!rutgers!att!chinet!patrickd
From: patrickd@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick Deupree)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: Considering using Windows
Message-ID: <1989Nov16.152754.10756@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 16 Nov 89 15:27:54 GMT
References: <3288@hydra.gatech.EDU>
Reply-To: patrickd@chinet.chi.il.us (Patrick Deupree)
Distribution: usa
Organization: The Whitewater Group, Evanston, IL
Lines: 59

In article <3288@hydra.gatech.EDU> gb7@prism.gatech.EDU (Joe Bradley) writes:
>  1) I read somewhere that Windows only supports 8 colors. Is this true?
>     If I have a VGA board that supports maybe 64 or 256 simultaneously
>     displayable colors is there any way to access these colors through
>     Windows? If not are there any workarounds? Is v3.0 going to support
>     more colors?
>
We had a monitor and monitor adapter in here once that supported 256 colors in
Windows.  Hmm, what was that again.  I think it was the Paradise Professional.
We got rid of it, though, because we didn't really need the enhanced graphics
here and the card and/or monitor were to expensive.  Basically all of this
is dependent on what kind of Windows display driver has been written for that
display.

As for the future version of Windows, I really wish that people would stop 
asking about it since you all know that anyone that has seen it can't talk
about it without getting into SERIOUS trouble.  Sorry, but I just get so many
calls from people asking me "Do you have Windows 3.0?  What does it look like?
Will it do this?  When will it come out?"  It gets a bit trying after a while.

>  2) Is writing for Windows/286 quite different from Windows/386 or is
>     it just a matter of recompiling for a different target environment?
>
If you write something under Windows 286 then that program should run under
Windows 386.  There is the slight possibility (if the program is rather large)
that it will have some problems with getting the necessary memory to run.  I
havn't seen it happen that often, though.  There are also a couple other quirks
that might show up.  If you write under Windows 386, I believe there are a
couple of extra Windows calls that you can make.  So, unless these calls are
made, an application written under Windows 386 will run under Windows 286.

You don't need to recompile, though.  Things are portable between the two
environments.

>  3) What's the learning curve for Windows software development for
>     someone who knows MS C and Assembler well?
> 
It would all depend on the things that you've done with MSC and MS MASM.  I
(before working here) had worked on writing an operating system for a Sun 2
as a project back in college.  I would consider myself a rather proficient
C programmer (assembly is a necessary evil that I'm no slouch at).

However, my first C program in Windows had some serious problems (they later
turned out to be stupid little things that were probably due to the fact that
I only have the SDK Reference Manual and never saw the section talking about
the .DEF files).

Course, for me it was easy because I was able to learn all the Windows calls
through Actor (an Object Oriented Programming environment for Windows) and
that is 3/4 of the battle.

Now I can rip off a simple C program in Windows in no time.  If I tried to
create a larger one I have a feeling I'd run into module management problems,
but that's what happens with any large program.
-- 
"I place my faith in fools.  Self confidence, my friends call it."
					-Edgar Allen Poe

Patrick Deupree -> patrickd@chinet.chi.il.us