Date:	Thu, 23 Apr 1998 13:27:51 +0300 (IDT)
From:	Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To:	a DOT hofkamp AT wtb DOT tue DOT nl
cc:	"altaf.aali" <altaf DOT aali AT cressoft-khi DOT com DOT pk>, djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject:	Re: Interfacing to a MS-Windows application: How ?
In-Reply-To:	<199804230810.KAA06685@se-46.wpa.wtb.tue.nl>
Message-ID:	<Pine.SUN.3.91.980423132009.9918C-100000@is>
MIME-Version:	1.0

On Thu, 23 Apr 1998 hat AT se-46 DOT wpa DOT wtb DOT tue DOT nl wrote:

>    something like 'system("simulation.exe")' will probably work here
>    as suggested by Eli Zaretskii (thanks !)

Not ``system("simulation")'', use ``system("start simulation")''.  The 
latter won't stop Excel in its tracks until the simulation returns.  I 
suppose there is a way to run external programs from Excel, and you 
should use that way to run the DJGPP program via "start".  This will run 
it in a separat DOS box, while Excel is free for whatever else you need 
it.  When the simulation is over, just load the file of results into 
Excel.

> 2) The DJGPP simulation-program needs a MS-win app to do some
>    calculations for it. For example, we need to lookup a value from a large
>    MS-Access data-base (or from an Excel spread-sheet).
> 
>    How to do this is not clear to me. Can I use Libwin for this purpose ?

Libwin will not help, AFAIK, since it does not (and cannot) make a DJGPP 
program compatible with Windows apps.  Libwin just lets you access some 
Windows features from a DJGPP program.  You can read the registry, 
interface to the clipboard, set your DOS box title, etc.  This all 
doesn't help you a bit top communicate with a Windows app; since you said 
that the results are huge, the clipboard won't help since access to it 
from DJGPP programs is limited to about 600KB (you need a buffer in lower 
memory to pass data to and from the clipboard).

The easiest way to accomplish this second task is to make the programs 
communicate through disk files.  Then you have the DJGPP program run the 
Windows application, and then read the results from a file.  Ugly, but it 
should work.

- Raw text -