Paul wrote:
There IS a beginning point to start with 32 bit code, but for some > reason nobody wants to look at it.
In my case, I'm interested but don't have the skills. I apologise if you thought we weren't interested. Rich does have the skills, so I'm sure he can get ideas from what you have. Jonathan's windows skills have increased by hacking on Winfract, but he'd probably not admit to being a windows programmer. But then Bert wrote Winfract originally with no Windows skills at all, learning as he went. What Rich is doing is ambitious - he is attempting a full-featured port of the DOS version to 32 bit Windows by abstracting the GUI in a cleaner way.
Rather than trying to hack the entire code (many have tried this), why not start from a known working base and port functions across, one at a time. I use MS Vis C++ version.
What you attemped is devilishly difficult because you have to understand, and basically re-implement, everything. As you have said yourself in the past, you were limited by your knowledge of the legacy code. A more literal port has it's own challenges, but has the advantage that it leverages the original code better, and if the effort succeeds with the new compile environment, then you have a working feature complete (albeit ugly) program that can be refactored incrementally. This isn't a debate, because the practical outcome determines if the porting approach works. Rich has yet to prove his port will work :-) Yours worked fine, but had a reduced feature set (plus some attractive new features - e.g. true color). We shall see. Tim