[Mingw-users] Fixing UNICODE related macros in w32api headers

[Igor Mikolic-T. <ig...@al...>]

Hi,

One really annoying problem with the w32api headers is that fairly common 
identifiers like "DrawText",  "SearchPath", "PostMessage", and 
"ReportEvent" (to name only 4 of *many*) get hijacked by macros as result 
of the way UNICODE is implemented.  This often makes porting source code to 
Windows an unnecessarily painful experience.

This problem can bite you even if your code only uses ISO standard headers, 
because these often include w32api headers behind the scenes.

Please note that I am _not_ criticizing w32api -- this same problem exists 
in the WinSDK headers -- it's all really Microsoft's fault ;).

I would like to solve this problem by replacing code like

#ifdef UNICODE
#define DrawText DrawTextW
#else
#define DrawText DrawTextA
#endif

with this:

#ifdef UNICODE
    static __inline__ int DrawText(HDC h, LPCWSTR str, int count, LPRECT 
rect, UINT format)
    {
       return DrawTextW(h, str, count, rect, format);
    }
#else
    static __inline__ int DrawText(HDC h, LPCSTR str, int count, LPRECT 
rect, UINT format)
    {
       return DrawTextA(h, str, count, rect, format);
    }
#endif

In C++ this means that your identifier named DrawText can co-exist happily 
with the w32api function (unless the two happen to have the same calling 
signature ;).  In C, you get easy to understand errors about either (1) 
wrong parameters passed to DrawText or (2) multiple definitions of 
DrawText.  A big improvement IMHO.

I've already done this for a bunch of cases that have already bitten me.

My question:  is this something you would be interested in incorporating 
into the w32api package?

If so, let me know.  I'll make a concerted effort this weekend to fix a 
whole bunch of these and submit a corresponding patch against the current 
w32api 2.0 headers.

Igor