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From: news@athena.mit.edu (News system)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: spawning under Windows
Message-ID: <1990Jun4.140645.27928@athena.mit.edu>
Date: 4 Jun 90 14:06:45 GMT
References: <2568@tuminfo1.lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de>
Reply-To: ccimino@hstbme.mit.edu.UUCP (c cimino)
Distribution: comp.windows.ms
Organization: Massachusetts General Hospital - Laboratory of Computer Science
Lines: 15

The documented way to control spawned windows is with the DDE interface.  There
is a section in the SDK Extensions manual that discusses using DDE with DOS
standard apps.  This allows one to start, stop, pass keyboard input, and copy
screens of the DOS application all under program control.  To simply be able
know when an application terminates would not require full DDE implementation.
There are two catches which are not documented.  It only works in Windows 286
(W/386 uses virtual machines for DOS apps so Windows "losses control", in the 
words of a MS support person) and many applications poll the keyboard when 
doing lengthy operations such as file saving (looking for ESC) and Windows will
lose strings that were meant to be read at the applications normal prompt.  In
other words, Windows can tell when an app terminates but not when it is waiting
for input.
Final caveat is that it is probable that this will not be supported in Windows
3.0.
P.S. could someone send me a summary of the spawning dicusses from last year?
Chris Cimino, MD   Internet: ccimino@hstbme.mit.edu