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I think this "poll" is missing an obvious choice:
Let the OS "vendor" provide whatever, just force them to make sure it's modular.
If it's a utility like Notepad, WordPad or IExplorer, it should also be just an application/utility. As anyone that has been using MS stuff for the last decade knows, putting IEplorer into the core Shell was just to fu*k Netscape. That they at the same time made life miserable for a lot of users by all of a sudden bringing all of the crappy IExplorer bugs into the freakin' shell (Explorer.exe) only displays they don't give a crap about users, only "market shares" and they will get them no matter how many corpses they have to walk over.
If it's OS/shell functionality they better provide documented and practically implementable interfaces for anyone to replace it with what they like, not like the horrible Progman DDE interface or the outright insult-to-anything-resembling-intelligence SMB.
One could also argue about their "mission" when they put stuff like the MTS as a required system component, even that less than 5% of the installations really need, or even use, the RAM and CPU sucking thing. It's only there to steal (and I do consider it theft) disk, RAM and CPU cycles from the rest >95% users/installations.
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I'm developing an ActiveX component. I want to set sometimes a custom mouse cursor. So I've create IDC_CURSOR1. How do I dysplay it ?
I've tryed SetCursor(LoadCursor(NULL, "IDC_CURSOR1")), but no cursor appears. where do I go wrong ?
Thank's.
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There is a Window message handler for it like "OnSetCursor" it should return the handle to the new cursor.
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Tzoockee wrote:
where do I go wrong
you posted in the wrong forum?
-c
ABSURDITY:
A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
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Sun has spent all of the past few years pre-occupied with taking cheap shots
at microsoft. Now they've made microsoft sensitive enough to come up with .NET . Java is in big big trouble.
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As a Programmer I will pick 3, because I would not want to support many versions of the same thing. In a perfect world there would be only 1 operating system and Visual C++ would be the only programming language. As a user I pick 2 to let competition make the applications better, but It would be nice if the operating system had everything built in so I would not have to buy many other applications.
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I would pick 3 as user and 1 as programmer (more confusion on the OS market = bigger hourly rates for developers).
-Gile
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Gile wrote:
more confusion on the OS market = bigger hourly rates for developers).
Interesting how all these court cases are for the benefit of consumers.
Regardz
Colin J Davies
Sonork ID 100.9197:Colin
More about me
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LOL
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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As a user, I pick #2. If, say, the OS or computer comes with optional software that I might find useful, great. I'll install it if I want to. If something is there that I don't want, need, or like, I should be able to uninsall and/or replace it.
As a programmer, I still pick #2. I consider it bad programming practice to make too many assumptions about the system on which you are running. I prefer to create a self-contained package.
When that's not possible, it's best to make it known what additional apps are required. If a large number of people might not have that app, redistribute it with your own code. For example, we support IE 4.0 or higher, since that is pretty widespread. Other specialized stuff we package with our software.
Life is so much easier when you can break down exactly what your program requires, instead of just hoping it's there in the OS.
No generalization is 100% true.
Not even this one.
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With the exception that if the user wants to install alternatives to said apps, they should be able to do so unhindered.
IMHO: MS should be broken up into OS and Apps companies and ne'er the twain shall meet, conspire nor swap undocumented API details.
Phil.
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I agree. [that MS should be broken into several companies]
I don't think it will have the effect that the naysayers want though. To use my phone company analogy from an earlier post, when AT&T was broken up, it went from one successful company to several successful companies. Similarly, I believe if MS were broken up, it would go from one massively successful company to several massively successful companies.
-Sean
----
"I'm a breast man."
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Don't you think that the programs you write internal inside your company work better together than programs written by several companies. Microsoft knows every detail about the windows core, so the OS-team can tell i.e. the Office-team that it is better to do certain things in other ways, which results in better performance and other improvements. If the Office-team has to find out these things by themselves, development-time will increase.
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Setsuko wrote:
If the Office-team has to find out these things by themselves, development-time will increase
Yes, it would. But if the Office team had to use only publicly available api/knowledge about the os then they would be on the same ground as everyone else.
I think the premise behind the breakup option would be that the OS-company would release those details in the open, letting everyone have access to them, thereby improving the rest of the worlds software.
-Sean
----
"I'm a breast man."
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If they were seperate companies, perhaps Microsoft would have to publically share the information with the new third party (split) company to be able to achieve their goals... giving the rest of the competition the same information would allow them to do exactly the same - allow competitors access to the same information would be beneficial to all in the end.
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Isn't that option 2 then?
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This sounds good, but is it really feasible?
For 100% standalone applications, there shouldn't be any problem. But what about applications that developers are leveraging?
Take IE for example. If I develop an application that hosts and HTML window, I would test it with IE. Now as more and more HTML window alternatives come out, in a perfect world they would be 100% compatible and this application would work with them all.
Now anybody who has ever done cross platform development can tell you that will NEVER EVER HAPPEN.
So, the next best thing is the application developers test and verify their software with each of the HTML windows. However, this doesn't come for free. It will add cost to the application. If an application is very dependent on the HTML window and the different HTML windows have large variances, then it could be very costly to test for all.
Well given that, the next best option would be to have an HTML window that developers can rely on having available. In this case, that would be IE. If they want to support other HTML windows, great.
That is why I don't agree with replacement. But I do agree with augmentation. OEMs MUST be allowed to augment the OS. If they want Netscape, GREAT. Just don't delete IE. (which of course would render most elements of the GUI useless.) They maybe even could remove all the IE icons and references. But they could not remove elements such as SHAPI32W (or whatever it is called) and the HTML renderer.
Tim Smith
I know what you're thinking punk, you're thinking did he spell check this document? Well, to tell you the truth I kinda forgot myself in all this excitement. But being this here's CodeProject, the most powerful forums in the world and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question, Do I feel lucky? Well do ya punk?
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Tim Smith wrote:
Just don't delete IE.
I agree, I don't mind them hiding icons or installing Netscape etc but don't remove it, somepeople want it.
- Matt Newman / Windows XP Activist
-Sonork ID: 100.11179
01001001 00100000 01010000 01100001 01100100 00100000 01001101 01111001 00100000 01010000 01101111 01110011 01110100 00100000 01000011 01101111 01110101 01101110 01110100
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Tim Smith wrote:
Well given that, the next best option would be to have an HTML window that developers can rely on having available. In this case, that would be IE. If they want to support other HTML windows, great.
Sure, but why can't that HTML control be part of the OS, without IE being present (I like IE by the way). In fact, in earlier versions of windows (9x, NT), if you knew which dll's provide the ie-html control, you could totally remove IE, replace the particular set of dll's and reregister them and have the html control available. Of course, this is illegal according to the IE Eula. It did demonstrate the fact that IE was *not* really part of those OS's though.
-Sean
----
"I'm a breast man."
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Sure, but why can't that HTML control be part of the OS, without IE being present (I like IE by the way).
TADA
You are one of the few people who actually see the REAL questionable thing that MS did. MS moved a whole series of important API such as COMCTL32 and HTML rendering into IE.
Now that IS the really sleezy thing. If anything the government should be arguing that those elements be moved into the OS if they want break IE off.
In fact, in earlier versions of windows (9x, NT), if you knew which dll's provide the ie-html control, you could totally remove IE, replace the particular set of dll's and reregister them and have the html control available. Of course, this is illegal according to the IE Eula. It did demonstrate the fact that IE was *not* really part of those OS's though.
LOL, you can do that with any piece of software. That DOESN'T PROVE ANYTHING. KERNEL32.DLL isn't part of the OS since I can replace it with a KERNEL32.DLL that does the exact same thing.
Tim Smith
I know what you're thinking punk, you're thinking did he spell check this document? Well, to tell you the truth I kinda forgot myself in all this excitement. But being this here's CodeProject, the most powerful forums in the world and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question, Do I feel lucky? Well do ya punk?
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It is possible. MS just have to specify the interface as kinda wrapper, and make the real DLL replaceable.
Direct X works this way: it specify the Interfaces, and the hardware itself is replaceable.
bugKilla
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"OSs should provide a rich set of APIs for programmers, and a very limited set of tools for users"
This is what I wish MS would do. Provide programmers with a rich set of Internet access APIs - for example - but don't force us to depend on the existence of an application (IE) that is a free replacement for a commercial app (Navigator). Of course I'm reaching back a few years for this example, but I hope everyone gets the idea.
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I always thought it was odd that the OS should specifiy the GUI , the conclusion I came to way way back was that it forced the user to the GUI, for most ignorant users the GUI is the OS . They neither know or care what the difference is , it is the functionality of the PC that they want not the underlying technical details. MS new this in the early days and tied the GUI to the OS rather than take an X windows approach of a seperate OS and GUI manager . To seperate them now would be a problem , no doubt , but it appears to me to have been a clear design decision back in Windows 1.0 to wrap the OS and the GUI . When the OS became a preemptive multitasker they had another opportunity to split them out and decided not to . Now they are either too far down this road to make a split desirable , or they realise that the keeping the GUI and the OS in one basket gives them a lot more leverage than the sum of the two.
Ain't nobody ever told you : There ain't no sanity clause .Groucho Marks
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MS new this in the early days and tied the GUI to the OS rather than take an X windows approach of a seperate OS and GUI manager.
From day one, the GUI has always sat on top of the OS. When Windows 1 came out they created OS style API routines as wrappers around the old INT routine methods of doing everything. However, the line became more blurred in 9x.
But when you look at NT, the line is hard and fast. Core OS on one side (NT Kernel) and Win32 GUI on the other. The early versions of NT support OS/2 and Posix applications.
To seperate them now would be a problem , no doubt , but it appears to me to have been a clear design decision back in Windows 1.0 to wrap the OS and the GUI.
To remove Win32 would be trivial. But it wouldn't be much of an OS. But nobody is even talking about that. They are talking about removing portions of the GUI. Breaking it up into small bits and making them all selectable. There is a huge difference between the two.
Tim Smith
I know what you're thinking punk, you're thinking did he spell check this document? Well, to tell you the truth I kinda forgot myself in all this excitement. But being this here's CodeProject, the most powerful forums in the world and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question, Do I feel lucky? Well do ya punk?
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Thanks for the clarification . I always assumed that windows forced you to use one GUI and you could not use someone elses . If the OS and the GUI were partitioned in this way why is it that no one seems to have even attempted to flog their GUI on top of the MS OS ?
Ain't nobody ever told you : There ain't no sanity clause .Groucho Marks
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