John called me yesterday, but I took yesterday off so did not get a
chance to talk with him. More info later this a.m. I am hoping.
On Sat, 23 May 2015 12:36:29 -0500, you wrote:
Great news.
Sent from my iPhone
On May 23, 2015, at 10:37 AM, Steve Matzura <number6@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
John has gotten all the compiler errors squashed, and found out some
interesting stuff that was put into the old DLL that really has no
business being there. It's been removed. Further, he's turned me on to
a compilation technique called the Common Language Runtime, or CLR,
which replaces the older Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC) library
scheme introduced in the late 90's and in common use by 2005 when this
original control surface was designed. Without going into the
technical details of why MFC is obsolete, suffice it to say that it
is, and has been supplanted by the newer CLR, which will stand the
test of time, considering MFC lasted nearly twenty years. What this
means is that whatever DLL John comes up with in the next wee while
will be able to be used on versions of Windows way past the upcoming
10, and may very well outlive us all! <grin>.
The whole system is written in C++, which is what's been the major
problem, converting old C code to the newer language and ways of doing
things. That's why that old stuff was thrown out and the code
restructured and rewritten.
How long will it be now until there's a clean build and the object can
be "instantiated"? And just what the hell does "instantiated" mean
anyway? First question, he's not sure, but today or tomorrow aren't
out of the question. As to the second question, "instantiate" is
almost a synonym for "connect," plus a whole lot more. WhatIs.com
defines instantiate as follows:
In programming, instantiation is the creation of a real instance or
particular realization of an abstraction or template such as a class
of objects or a computer process. To instantiate is to create such
an instance by, for example, defining one particular variation of
object within a class, giving it a name, and locating it in some
physical place.
If any big-guns programmers in here would care to chime in with a
better explanation, please kick in. An explanation of why something
like JAWS can't talk directly to Sonar without the use of a control
surface object might be most instructive in explaining why this is
such a hard thing to do, and why just simple scripts can't do it by
themselves. Yes, I program, but some of this new-age stuff is beyond
not just my ability to understand, but to explain. LOL.
