Visual IDE for ROS

[Joseph Miller]

Hello list,
I am new to ReactOS, but very interested in Win32 programming.  I am 
also very new to Win32 and C++, but I began a project about a year ago 
to develop and open source Visual C++ IDE for Win32 because I had not 
found an open source one yet.  Well, it was one of my first attempts at 
Win32 and at C++, but I managed to create a very basic IDE and I have 
successfully created several programs for both work and other projects.  
Everything is based on a class called GWin.  I feel like the GWin code 
is very stable, even at this point, but much of the API will probably 
still change as I learn about Win32.  Unfortunately, the IDE code is 
pretty dang crappy because I did not understand some very basic 
programming concepts.  To make a long story short, the IDE has been 
developed to a usable point, and the code in the GWin class is worth 
continuing.  The IDE itself is undergoing a major rewrite for better 
functionality and structure.

Yesterday I installed ReactOS for the very first time on my computer.  I 
was impressed with the number of programs that actually work at this 
stage of development.  Even Scite (an excellent, code-highlighting 
editor) works!  So I am currently working on making my Visual GWin++ 
project work under ReactOS.  I have managed to get it running and 
compile a test program under ReactOS, so with a little more testing, I 
will release a version just for ROS.  I will also be working on a 
tutorial for how to get started with it.  Visual GWin++ currently has 
support for windows, edit controls, static controls, listbox controls, 
MDI clients (limited), tabcontrols, and scrollbars (limited).  The 
program can load and save projects in an XML file format using libxml.  
The current version is v0.02-pre-alpha.  You can see the Windows version 
at http://www.calcmaster.net/visual-c++/ .  When the ROS version is 
ready, I will release it.  I would like some feedback on what you guys 
think about this project and whether or not you think it will be a 
benefit to ROS.

BTW, I came across some message handling bugs in ROS and I guess this is 
the mailing list to report it?  I will try to download the source and 
look it over, but I wanted to let you guys know first.  I had a handler 
set up for EN_KILLFOCUS on one of my edit controls. The function was 
supposed to modify another window and then return.  I'm assuming what 
happened was that as my function was modifying the other window, ROS 
kept assuming that it needed to send more EN_KILLFOCUS messages to me to 
let me know my control had lost focus.  I had to add a hack to make sure 
that  after the handler is called the first time, it is not called again 
until it has completed  what it needs to do.  I had a similar problem 
with LBN_SELCHANGE when I tried to kill the control's parent window.  
ROS assumed that this meant it needed to tell me that the selection had 
changed and sent LBN_SELCHANGE.  This caused the same type of loop that 
I described above.  Where do I look to correct this?

-Joseph