When Should You Use Reference Types?

	Chapter 1 - The Visual C++ Compiler, Version 6
	Visual C++ 6: The Complete Reference
	Chris H. Pappas and William H. Murray, III

Copyright 1998 The McGraw-Hill Companies

---

	The Development System

	The Microsoft 32-bit Visual C++ compiler for Windows 95/98 and Windows NT incorporates new, fully integrated Windows development tools and a visual interface. For example, the debugging capabilities of Microsoft’s original CodeView are now directly accessible from within the compiler’s integrated debugger. The following sections list those stand-alone utilities that are now incorporated directly into the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler.

	The New Integrated Debugger

	Microsoft pulls the horsepower of its original CodeView debugger directly into the Visual C++ platform with its new integrated debugger. The debugger is accessed from the Debug menu. The integrated debugger allows you to execute programs in single steps, view and change variable contents, and even back out of code sections. You will find it to be a big help when programs compile but don’t seem to perform as expected.

	The New Integrated Resource Editors

	These editors are accessed from the Resource menu. The resource editors allow you to design and create Windows resources, such as bitmaps, cursors, icons, menus, and dialog boxes. Resources allow you to create visually appealing user interfaces to your applications. In the next sections, we’ll look at some specific information on two of the most popular resource editors.

	The Dialog Box Editor

	The Dialog Box editor is a slick graphical development tool that allows you to easily and quickly create professional-looking dialog boxes. The Dialog Box editor allows you to customize a dialog box’s labels, framing, option and checkbox selections, text windows, and scroll bars.

	The Dialog Box editor allows you to combine numerous controls into your custom dialog boxes. Controls combines a visual graphical representation of some feature with a predefined set of properties that you can customize. For example, checkboxes, radio buttons, and list boxes are all forms of Windows controls.

	The Image Editors

	The graphical image editors allow you to easily create custom bitmaps, icons, and cursors. A bitmap is a picture of something—for example, an exclamation point used in a warning message. An icon is a small color image used to represent an application when it has been minimized. Visual C++ even allows you to use an image editor to create custom cursors. For example, you could design a financial package with a cursor that looks like a dollar sign. Custom icons, cursors, and bitmaps can be saved with an .RC file extension and used in resource script files. You’ll learn how these resources are used in Chapters 20 through 23.

	The Binary Editor

	The Binary Editor allows you to edit a resource at the binary level in either hexadecimal or ASCII format. You can also use the Find command to search for either ASCII strings or hexadecimal bytes, and use regular expressions with the Find command to match a pattern. You should use the Binary Editor only when you need to view or make minor changes to custom resources or resource types not supported by the Microsoft Developer Studio environment.

	The String Editor

	A string table is a Windows resource that contains a list of IDs, values, and captions for all the strings of your application. For example, the status bar prompts are located in the string table. An application can have only one string table. String tables make it easy to localize your application into different languages. If all strings are in a string table, you can localize the application by translating the strings (and other resources) without changing source code.

	Additional Tools

	Additional Visual C++ tools that are integrated into the compiler’s package are located under the Tools menu. These include Spy++, MFC Tracer, Control Wizard, AVI Editor, DataObject Viewer, and the ActiveX Control Test Container. You’ll find the Spy++ utility a great help when working on 32-bit Windows applications.

	ActiveX Control Test Container

	The Test Container tool is an application designed by Microsoft that allows you to quickly test custom controls. Properties and features of the control can be altered while in the test container.

	API Text Viewer

	The API Text Viewer allows you to view constants, variables, declarations, and types that can be copies from API files into Visual Basic applications.

	AVI Editor

	The AVI Editor allows you to view, edit, and merge AVI files.

	DataObject Viewer

	The DataObject Viewer displays the list of data formats offered by ActiveX and OLE data objects created by the Clipboard or drag-and-drop operations.

	DDE Spy

	You use DDE Spy to track all messages.

	DocFile Viewer

	The DocFile Viewer displays the contents of a small compound file.

	Error Lookup

	This tool allows you to view a detailed analysis of an error message.

	Heap Walk Utility

	The HeapWalk utility enumerates the memory blocks in a specified heap.

	Help Workshop

	This tool provides the framework for navigating from application user interfaces to help contexts. Implementing further navigation within the Help file is the domain of help authoring rather than programming. The purpose of the utility is to describe the general process of authoring and editing Help topic files.

	OLE Client, Tools, and View

	The OLE Viewer displays the ActiveX and OLE objects installed on your computer and the interfaces they support. It also allows you to edit the registry and look at type libraries.

	The Process Viewer

	The Process Viewer allows you to quickly set and view all of the options necessary to track current processes, threads, and processor time-slicing. To start the Process Viewer, simply double-click on the Process Viewer icon in the Visual C++ group box.

	The Process Viewer can help answer questions such as the following:

	•		How much memory does the program allocate at various points in its execution?

	•		How much memory is being paged out?

	•		Which processes and threads are using the most CPU time?

	•		How does the program run at different system priorities?

	•		What happens if a thread or process stops responding to DDE, OLE, or pipe I/O?

	•		What percentage of time is spent running API calls?

	Resource Viewer

	This tool allows you to access your project resources.

	ROT Viewer

	The ROT Viewer displays information about ActiveX and OLE objects currently existing in memory.

	Spy++

	Spy++ is a utility that gives a graphical view of the system’s processes, threads, windows, and windows messages.

	Stress Utility

	The Stress application provides acquisition of system resources for low resource stress testing. The acquirable resources include the global heap, user heap, GDI heap, disk space, and file handles. Stress provides fixed-, random-, and message-dependent allocations of these resources. In addition, it provides several logging options to help locate and reproduce bugs.

	MFC Tracer

	MFC Tracer is a tool that allows the programmer to set the trace flags in AFX.INI. These Trace flags are used to define the category of Trace messages that are sent from the application to the debugging window. Tracer is thus a debugging tool. You’ll want to use the MFC Tracer tool when you build MFC applications in Chapters 23 to 27.

	UUID Generator

	You use the UUID Generator to generate a universally unique identifier (UUID) that lets the client and server applications recognize each other.

	WinDiff

	The WinDiff utility is also found in the Visual C++ group. This tool allows you to graphically compare and modify two files or two directories. All of the options within WinDiff operate much like their counterpart commands in the Windows 95/98 Explorer or Windows NT File Manager.

	ZoomIn

	You can use the ZoomIn utility (ZOOMIN.EXE) to capture and enlarge an area of the Windows desktop.

Books24x7.com, Inc 2000 –