Using yactf from Visual Basic 4.0

[jgalar]

Hi,

I am working on a trace viewer written in Visual Basic. I think both of our projects would benefit tremendously if yactfr could be used from Visual Basic applications.

Note that my code depends on a fair amount of custom widgets written using VB 4.0, so I can't move to the newly introduced VB .NET just yet.

I have a license of Visual C++ 1.0 which I can use to build 16-bit real mode code. I will send you patches to build on this compiler since your code seems to use a lot of experimental C++ features. I think we should focus on industry standards if this project is to become successful.

Kind regards.

[eepp]

Hi @jgalar. Thank you for this feature request.

I believe this would be possible through a COM+ yactfr component to bridge with VB. Nevermind about your MSVC license, today we can use Visual Studio Express for free to build the project.

For this to be possible, the yactfr library needs to build on Windows first. AFAIK, the only non-portable part, as stated in README.adoc, is the memory mapped file view factory which uses Unix system calls. We need to make a compatible factory for Windows using the File Mapping API.

This is on the roadmap, and should not be too difficult to implement since the Windows-specific concepts of file mapping and file view objects can map directly to the yactfr data source factory and data source concepts.

I think we should focus on industry standards if this project is to become successful.

I totally agree with you that bridging with essential, industry proven tools such as VB 4.0 must remain the project's priority and I consider it my duty to ensure this.

Again, I appreciate your investment in yactfr's great journey to success.

[jgalar]

Thank you for the quick response.

According to this recent article I found, this feature seems to depend on Windows NT, which introduces a page-based virtual-memory system. I am not sure this will take-off and yactfr's success shouldn't hinge on these kinds of unproven technologies.

Still, I reckon it is your call as the project's maintainer. Would you consider the addition of a DOS compatibility layer an acceptable compromise?

[eepp]

Thank you for sharing this modern resource. I don't how I missed this article. Indeed you make me realize I should think about a more standardized way of providing data bytes to the yactfr VM instead of relying on a bleeding edge technology which could be deprecated at any minute.

Would you consider the addition of a DOS compatibility layer an acceptable compromise?

I'm already working on writing HolyC bindings to make this work on TempleOS so as to reach a very large customer base, especially in the Northern Nebraska area. Part of this work could prove useful for a DOS layer I guess, as both systems are somewhat similar in their design. If only MS-DOS 7 could be installed on its own, we would have access to a state-of-the-art FAT32 API which could help a lot here...