6.1 Win32 basics

In the preceding chapters, we created programs with graphical interfaces using QuickWin. One advantage of using QuickWin is that once you start creating Win32 applications, a lot of the functions used will be familiar. This is to be expected, because QuickWin is a wrapper around a subsection of the Windows 32 application programming interface (Win32 API) functions. While using QuickWin, we were introduced to some very useful Win32 APIs that could be used with QuickWin programs. Even if you want to write nothing but QuickWin applications, you should find much of what is covered in the following chapters to be useful.

Users of CVF should be able to develop Win32 applications with very few limitations, and in Chapters 6 through 14 we will examine a very wide range of those possibilities. The Win32 application programming interface (API) functions provided by the Windows operating system are divided into a number of dynamic-link libraries (DLL), which must be included, by means of a USE statement, in any program segment that wishes to use the features of a particular DLL. The Win32 functions are called from C, but CVF has interface block definitions for almost all APIs to simplify calling Win32 functions from Fortran. The Win32 API functions are described in the Platform SDK online documentation. Information is provided on the calling format, together with a description of the routine's arguments, and the QuickInfo at the bottom of the Win32 routine documentation page lists the library to be used.