Re: [perl-win32-gui-hackers] Win32::GUI::Constants

[Robert M. <rm...@po...>]

Glenn Linderman wrote:
> On approximately 11/9/2005 1:26 PM, came the following characters from 
> the keyboard of Robert May:
> 
>> Please find attached what I hope is a final beta of a 
>> Win32::GUI::Constants package - v0.00_03.
>>
> Constants.PL contains stuff like:
> 
> BDR_OUTER        0x0003      # (BDR_RAISEDOUTER | BDR_SUNKENOUTER)
> BDR_INNER        0x000C      # (BDR_RAISEDINNER | BDR_SUNKENINNER)
> BDR_RAISED       0x0005      # (BDR_RAISEDOUTER | BDR_RAISEDINNER)
> 
> Perhaps it would be a nice addition to the TODO file to "enhance 
> Constants.PL to interpret constant C expressions expressed in terms of 
> previously defined constants within the Constants.PL file".  In the 
> fullness of time, then, cutting and pasting would be easier from the 
> header files.
> 
> An encompassing TODO addition would be to change the syntax for the 
> __DATA__ section to be the subset of C that includes comments, and 
> #define.  That would make the cutting and pasting even easier!
> 
> Of course, that leads in to the also missing TODO of parsing the Windows 
> header files themselves, looking only for #define that consist only of 
> constant numbers and expression syntax and already seen constant 
> operands, which would also be encompassing!  These are items that I 
> could be interested in whacking at, if I ever complete my long-delayed 
> top-priority project.  But listing them might inspire someone else to 
> beat me to it, which would be OK too.

I'll add something to the TODO file about making it easier to extract 
the constant definitions, but the though of writing a C-preprocessor 
(even a partial one) just for this one job doesn't appeal to me much - I 
haven't tried CPAN to see what's available off the shelf though.  From 
what I've read h2xs may have some functionality, but I couldn't get the 
header parsing functionality to work on windows - perhaps I should give 
it another go in a cygwin environment.

> I guess you can tell that I'm quite happy with the functionality, since 
> I can only think of long-term TODO items :)

I'll count that as a thumbs-up.  I'll try to find time to package it all 
up properly this weekend.

Regards,
Rob.