I'm trying to write to a custom Output Window Pane, but the only examples that I can find for writing to the output window automatically write to the Debug pane.
I've gotten as far as creating a custom pane with a VS add-in in C#, and writing text to it when VS2010 starts up. I'm working in a C++ project, and I'm just wondering how I can write to my custom pane from anywhere in code. I'd like to do it with as little overhead as possible, because I am working in a larger code base that I don't want to have to heavily modify.
Thanks
The Debug pane shows results of OutputDebugString calls (either direct, or by Debug.WriteLine / Trace.WriteLine) (it serves the same purpose as dbgview.exe from SysInternals). This is default behavior of the IDE. I think, that writing to custom pane may require implementing your own extension for Visual Studio.
As a workaround, you may use dbgview, define specific prefixes (as [MODULE-A]: , [MODULE-B]: etc.) and set filters to highlight occurences of specific words. Note, that dbgview will work properly only if you run your program without the IDE.
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Is there a simple way in C++ (and if yes, how to do it, preferably within Visual Studio VS2012) to set different font properties (size, type, bold, etc) for different elements of one dialog window (button, static text, title, etc)?
The font properties of a dialog window can be modified in its 'properties' dialog in VS2012, but they are then applied to all the window elements.
My need is to emphasize some information wrt other in the same window, e.g. to make it visually easier to differentiate labels from variable values, and static from modifiable variables.
Thanks for any help.
In a recent and well written article, John Morrison Leon presents his solution which precisely addresses this issue and more.
On top of enabling the wished for possibilities with formatting, it offers a whole new way to easily create and use dialog windows, purely C++ (Win32 without MFC or ATL/WPL, independent of the IDE, mapping at compile instead of run time).
The piece is a rather detailed tutorial, licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL). It contains all C++ source code (37.2kB zip) and examples (80+kB). It has won Best C++ Article of May 2015 (First Prize).
------------- some excerpts quoted from this (long) article -----------------------
An alternative approach in which dialogs are entirely specified as C++ code that requires neither IDE support to be written nor IDE generated resources to be executed. Powered by the C++ type system.
The fundamental difference with the approach presented here is that your code does all the work of creating the dialog rather than have Windows create a dialog from a dialog template resource that you then attach code to. There is no need for dialog or control ID's because there is no run-time mapping of code to a dialog template. Instead there is compile time mapping of each control to a C++ variable. Furthermore each of those variables has its own unique data type. Such rich typing is perhaps radical but it brings many benefits and is key to the design. It allows the C++language to resolve many issues at compile time through type resolution and this reduces and simplifies the code that you have to write. In practice this means that for every variable representing a control, say btnCancel, a unique data type will be generated with the same name prefixed by an underscore _btnCancel.As you will see, there are times when you will need to refer to a control by its data type _btnCancel rather than its variable name btnCancel.
The unfamiliarity of coding a layout instead of dragging and dropping it is dealt with in the next section and after that, most things are simpler, cleaner and more concise than you are probabaly used to.
There are some other innovations including:
•all control variables carry a dynamic text dynamic text buffer as_text through which the controls window text may be read and written, and which persists when the dialog is closed.
•support for non-windows controls that are simply painted onto the dialog and respond to mouse events. (examples are provided for some cases where this makes more sense).
•support for imposing aesthetic metrics (button sizes, spacing, colours, control styles etc.) at an application level on all dialogs hosted.
•replacement of the notion of 'Anchors' with Expand_X and Expand_Y styles for controls that can benefit from being enlarged if the dialog window is enlarged.
•some modest but effective streamlining of Win 32 programming with controls.
I'm writing a C++ MFC program which automate MS Word using their interfaces.
From my app I was able to open MS Word, open macro window but I need to retrieve all macros from a combobox and add them in my app and so later on user can choose which macro he wants to apply to some document.
Can retrieving be done with GetProperty method? If it can you can show me an example?
You can use Document.VBProject to get access to the VBA code (to get to the macros in the document). Here is how to do it in word using VBA/C#. You can just rewrite that code using C++.
Note that MFC is not the easiest way to work with word automation, but you can do it using MFC as well. There is more than one approach available when you do automation with MFC. You may do this with MFC-only-way (i.e. in style from 90x, using object wrappers), or use e.g. #import directive.
GetProperty is basically a generic method, which can be to get some properties of the object it is applied to, i.e. it is not specific for macros.
Note also that end-user must have "Trust programmatic access to VBA project" enabled to allow your code to get the macros (this is a checkbox in word security settings, turned OFF by default). May be a show-stopper.
I'm new to visual studios and I just created this very short calculator and I want to put it on mediafire for people to download but I wanted to change the icon..
I've heard that you select your app in solution explorer and Project>Properties
But my properties menu seems different.
It saids calculator property pages.
It doesnt have the tabs like ~Publish~ or ~Applications~ where people said you change your icon.
My properties is like this:
Configuration: Active(Debug)
and some other stuff below it some complicated stuff(to me)
Why doesnt mine have what other people have? I just want to share my first ever app with a custom icon. Help please, will appreciate it.
Create a text file, rename it res.rc, edit it to contain the line:
201 ICON "myicon.ico"
Add that file to your project. The file myicon.ico must exists.
Note: This is a bit hacky, the numerical vaulues should preferably be defined in a header.
You might be confused because Visual Studio supports different languages, and its UI is not consistent across those languages. Since you tagged it C++, the "old" rules apply. An application icon is a so-called resource.
You have to provide an .ico file, and reference it in a .rc file. The resource compiler (RC) compiles it into a .res file, and the linker then adds it to the EXE.
In C++, if you open the form in designer view, the properties window has an icon property that will allow you to browse for the icon of your choice.
Just for reference, i spent two hours trying to change it without any success until i resized the icon, it should be 32x32 and another one for small icon -not sure if its necessary though- with 16x16.
visual studio creates two icons when create the project , one is called small.ico and one is name yourexe.ico, just replace those and make sure to have correct sizes.
I am not new in C++ but this is my first time developing a Win32 program. It has to be graphical and so I have been attempting to get user input using an input/dialog box with no success.
I have read this topic on MSDN and found it helpful, but I get an error about IDD_PASSWORD and IDE_PASSWORD not being defined. Declaring them in resource.h and giving arbitrary values (like 110, 111) yields no results. Other attempts I have tried to modify the auto-generated about box, which also yields no results after modification, I noticed that if i change the value of IDD_ABOUTBOX in resource.h from 103, this also does not work. I also tried using the .rc under Resource View, but still no results.
So I'd like to know if the resource box templates have predefined constant numbers that i have to use, if so where because I searched that too or if there is another way to obtain user input in a windowed application. I just want to obtain an integer, that's all.
There is nothing magic in the numbers assigned to resources. The numbers are what the code actually uses to identify the resources. Visual Studio just allows you to assign symbolic names to those numbers through the use of C macros (i.e., #define) to make your code easier to read. These values are all defined in the file resource.h by convention, and although you can modify that file manually, you usually should not do so—let the Visual Studio Resource Editor handle that for you.
The problem you're running into is that you actually have to create those resources first before the numbers will mean anything. When you create a new Win32 project, Visual Studio will automatically create an about box dialog and give it the symbolic ID IDD_ABOUTBOX. However, there is no such IDD_PASSWORD dialog created by default in a new project, and there isn't one built into Windows.
You can create this dialog yourself using the Dialog Editor (part of Visual Studio's Resource Editor), which is pretty easy to do as it allows you to drag controls around on the dialog where WYSIWYG. When you add a new dialog box to your project's resources, you will be given the option to name it anything you like. You can use IDD_PASSWORD if you want, or any other name. A numeric ID will be assigned automatically based on an algorithm; generally the lowest available number is used.
The article you linked to is assuming that you have already added a dialog to your project with the symbolic name IDD_PASSWORD (which is probably a mistake on the part of the author). All it shows you is how to display that dialog once it exists as part of your project's resources.
It's going to be somewhat difficult to learn Win32 programming just by reading the MSDN documentation. I strongly suggest getting a book that explains it more clearly and in a more logical order. The canonical text is Charles Petzold's Programming Windows, 5th Edition. Note that you will need to make sure you get the 5th edition, as the newer editions digress from their Win32 roots and start talking about completely unrelated things like C# and Silverlight.
If you absolutely must learn by trial-and-error and MSDN, start reading about dialog box resources here.
Our company has an installer written in C++ that creates program shortcuts using IShellLink as described in:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb776891%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
On Windows 8 all shortcuts created in the Start Menu will also show as titles on the Start Screen. What we're looking to do is programmically control which icons are shown on the Start Screen. In the following article it describes the option "System.AppUserModel.StartPinOption" as:
To create add an app shortcut without pinning it to the Start screen
view, you can set the following property on the shortcut:
System.AppUserModel.StartPinOption = 1. The symbolic name for 1 is
APPUSERMODEL_STARTPINOPTION_NOPINONINSTALL.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/jj673981%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
This appears to be possible using the Windows Installer, however I haven't found a way to accomplish the same functionality programmatically in C++ given our context.
If anyone has any information about this, or an example of some sort, it would be much appreciated.
One thing I found was that "..NewInstall" literally means that. User customizations to the tiles seem to be retained even after you delete/update the .lnk files. This is probably a good thing as updates won't reset the user's environment, but it does mean that I needed to use fresh installs of Windows 8 during testing. I used a VM box to minimize the pain. At least I don't know how to delete the properties once set from within the environment.