Re: Passing byte arrays into C functions

Roger,
        my comments are inline.

Discussion of Java/Win32/COM integration with Jawin
<JAWIN@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote on 08/15/2004 12:00:00 AM:

>
> Date:    Sat, 14 Aug 2004 11:24:52 -0400
> From:    Roger I Martin PhD <hypernexdev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: Passing byte arrays into C functions
>
> Hi Alex,
>
------ snip ---
>
> Some of the things your are talking about are of interest.  If you have
> a sourceforge account I would be happy to turn it on for Jawin and work
> with you on your projects.

   My sourceforge username is polrtex.

> I need to get active again with Jawin; it's
> just that I'm doing more things with linux and one of my other pet
> projects that is more interesting and has more potential.

 Hm, which project is that  ?  On a separate note, I haven't really dug
into the C implementation of Jawin (just enough to understand marshalling)
, but it certainly seems to make sense that it should be possible to use a
similar approach under Linux and make Jawin approach work under Linux as
well. Apparently, COM stuff would be specific to the MS platform, but
generic native library calls should be similar - don't you think ? Then
the project will become Ja[w|l]in :-)


> A better set of examples would be very good.  We have talked of ways to
> make stub generation for non-COM dll's but haven't found a complete way
> to achieve it.

I was initially under the impression that the Jawin type browser was able
to generate code from dll-s (I think that the documentation had something
mentioning it).

I will collect examples as I work through my Win32 programming book. I
will have to write-up my summary understanding of the marshalling in
layman's terms the way I understand it(for me, it was quite a steep curve
to figure out how the marshalling works and what it is all about - I am
not all that good with C and I am not all that familiar with what goes
into the stack, how big it has to be, etc). I have constructed in my head
an explanation of the whole marshalling business, I will do a write up and
send for review to see if I understand things correctly.


>
> What is your project(s) time line(s)?
>

I am not very certain what you are referring to here. The examples &
documentation will be an ongoing thing (no timeline). Currently, I have
all the structs and constants for win32 generated (from VJ++) and they
compile. The only thing that I might have to do is remove some of the MS
generated @dll.import javadoc tags, and I can send them in. The generated
functions signatures don't compile yet.

I also have stubs generated for MS Word and Excel that compile and work -
as I had mentioned before, I am not sure how much value that has, since
anyone who can run the Jawin browser can generate them on their own (with
a few minor fixes). The value that I see in them is breaking them up in a
separate project, that will come compiled & bundled with the Jawin .dll,
so that Java developers that don't know anything about Jawin (and don't
need to know anything about Jawin), can just drop the jar in their
classpath and have full access to the MS Office APIs.


Regards,

Alex Kotchnev
Developer / Systems Analyst
Diversified Information Technologies

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