Wintab.dll technical issues.

Patrik Stridvall ps at leissner.se
Sun Nov 24 15:02:38 CST 2002


> Firstly a quick note:
> I have opened a bug for implementation of wintab.dll (Bug No. 1160)
> 
> Now the questions:
> 
> 1: Writing stubs.
> I'll be taking up Patrik Stridvall's offer to write stubs for 
> anyone new 
> to wine development.

Yes, I'm working on it right now.
Will probably not finish tonight though.

> One question about stubs:
> What's the wine policy on stub return values?

No general policy. It depends.

> Should a stub always return an error?

Normally stubs should indicate error (return NULL, FALSE or similar)
and do SetLastError(ERROR_NOT_IMPLEMENTED).

> Should/Can it return success?

In some cases indicating success (return TRUE or similar), even
though it not strictly correct, might be a good idea. It depends.

Lying to the application should be avoided of course but sometimes
it is nessary.

> 2: Testing wintab.dll in Win98.
> wintab.dll is quite complex for what it does.

I guess you mean wintab32.dll.
wintab.dll is the 16 bit variant AFAICS.

> Therefore the only practical way to implement it is
> to work on the functions and communication models that are
> used by the apps I want it to support.

Probably.
 
> To do this, I need some tool that can log the function calls and
> parameters to the DLL, while wunning Win98.The logging must 
> be able to 
> let the
> programmer choose elements from data stuctures in 
> parameters/retvals to log.
> Any ideas????

There are no good tools to do this AFAIK. But if you find any
I'm very intrested.
 
> I've attempted to use apis32 and built a wintab.fnl file for 
> wintab.dll.
> Unfortunately apis32 doen't allow the logging of the contents of data 
> structs.

Yes. APIS32 is the best AFAIK and it sucks pretty bad IMHO.
 
> I would also like to know experinces with Spy++.
> Wintab can send it's own custom messages, so I'm wondering how good
> Spy++ is at detecting custom messages?
> 
> I've used it many times before, but only to examine standard windows 
> messages.

No idea, haven't used it for years. 
 
> 3: Coding standards.
> I haven't found any coding standards associated with wine.
> This is particularly important, as I'll be writing new source files.
> Can someone point me to the standards?

We have none. Decide for yourself. However please do not choose anything
to unlik anything else in Wine.



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