elj-win32-dev: project summary (31 Dec 2000)

[geoff at elj.com]

   -- posted to comp.lang.python since it was the Python win32
   -- book that inspired this project in SmallEiffel.

Just an end of year update for the elj-win32-dev project:

   http://www.egroups.com/group/elj-win32-dev/

Some useful starting points:

   http://elj-win32.sourceforge.net/
   http://efsa.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/view/Main/EljWin32All

The current status and some background was recently summarised by Uwe
Sander - usander at online.de - on our mailing list:

   http://www.egroups.com/message/elj-win32-dev/401     or
   http://www.elj.com/elj.cgi?article=20001231a  (has some links + gif)

--8<--
Okay, a short history, our current state and what we plan to do:

 * Geoff started the project last summer with the intention to give
   [Small]eiffel programmers full access to the win32 api. He called
   out for assistence and Birgit and me joined the team.

 * A few months later, we started a a new subproject, called ccl
   (component and class library), as an abstract layer over the pure api
   calls.

The idea is, to isolate the api calls in a way that they can be
exchanged to gain independence from a special os but have them (the
api calls) still available if a programmer needs them for special
purposes. Why we are going this way? There are two reasons for it:

 * We don't want to maintain two libraries, a c based one and an
   eiffel based one on top of the c code. Yes, we have some c code
   in it, but the functions are mostly simple 1 to 1 mappers and
   for this fact nearly bug free right from the start.

 * We found, that in real world application development it is very
   useful to have the possibillty to invoke api calls if there is
   nothing in the library which fulfills your needs. ccl is not
   finished, but it supports a form class, all windows standard
   controls and some of the common controls of the windows api now.

The next subproject, started a few weeks ago, is kk, which is in a very
early state. This is the two way design tool on the top of the ccl.

What we are doing now:

 * Birgit is improving the win32 api calls in a way that we need much
   lesser c code.

 * Geoff is coding lots of examples for win32 api programming with
   eiffel, collecting tons of information resources for further
   development and providing some help with ccl and kk. He is a
   very busy man ;-)

 * Sven and me are currently rebuilding the streaming mechanism in the
   heart of the ccl, so that xml becomes the standard stream format for
   exporting and importing component properties. This will mostly be
   used from the visual designer of kk.

What we plan:

 * Finishing the windows controls encapsulation of ccl,

 * building an abstract database access layer for the ccl,

 * developing of data sensitive controls and finally, after further
   development of kk,

 * porting the whole thing to linux.

If we don't find more helping hands, I guess we need 6 - 9 months
until we can start the port to linux.

I hope I have answered your questions.
-->8--

Since this message Uwe has added an interface to the Postgresql database
which will be added to a CVS project in the near future.

As you can see we have come a long way, but there is still a long way to
go.  To subscribe to the elj-win32-dev list:

   http://www.egroups.com/group/elj-win32-dev/

just send a message to elj-win32-dev-subscribe at egroups.com

Happy New Year to all ..

Regards .. Geoff

-- geoff at elj.com
-- http://www.elj.com/elj-daily.cgi


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