Subject: Re: MS Platform SDK
From: [email-masked] (Paul Garceau)

26 Nov 1997 11:18:21 -0800
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
References: <[email-masked]>
Reply-To: [email-masked]
To: Joshua J Little <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked]

Hi Joshua,

	I don't have the answer to your question re: the MS Platform SDK.  Thus, 
I have decided to include a cc: to the gnu-win32 mailing list.  They are 
very helpful there and will likely have the available answers you need far 
more readily than I might.

On 24 Nov 97 at 13:24, the Illustrious Joshua J Little wrote:

> Hello,
>  I've been reading the mailing list archives for gnu-win32 and I
> saw that you'd been asking about getting the November 1997 release of the
> Microsoft Platform SDK.  Did you ever figure it out?

	You can get it to work if you can re-define some of the inline assembler 
being used by MS in their headers (Intel standard).  As I understand it, 
the Intel Standard for inline assembly is unique and has no reference to 
the standard AT&T inline assembly used by Gnu-Win32 (mingw32 or 
otherwise).

	I have heard a rumour that the EGCS compiler can handle the conversion
far easier than the compiler included with Cygwin32 but have yet to check
this out.

	Of course, there is not any sort of documentation that takes you through, 
step-by-step, the process of converting those MS Platform SDK header files 
to be compatible with a GPL based Gnu-Win32 compiler such as mingw32 or 
the Cygwin32 compiler available from Cygnus.

	If I could, I'd be happy to put one together since it seems it would be 
an easy enough process to complete.  Problem is that the necessary data is 
not readily available...or so it would seem.  I have received hints and 
pointers from the gnu-win32 mailing list, but nothing I would call a 
"simple solution" to the problem of converting the MS Platform SDK to a 
GPL based pre-processor/compiler.

>  I would really like
> to be able to get the SDK to work, so I'd appreciate any help you can
> give.  (My main reason is that I am trying to get the programs given in
> "Programming Windows 95" by Charles Petzold to compile with a free
> compiler.)  Any help/advice you can give me would be greatly appreciated.

	Most of those "should" compile with either Cygwin32 or mingw32 as long 
as the headers are set up properly and there are no references to APIs 
such as the MS DirectX.

	Any MS APIs that might exist such as DirectX 4 or later do not have 
any corresponding headers pre-defined for their respective DX APIs.  The 
available Win32 headers for mingw32 (Minimalist GNU-C/C++) can compile any 
Win32 based programs that you might have, including DX3.

	For lack of any specifics, I am of the impression that Cygwin32 can not, 
"out of the box", process DirectX programs of any kind since the main 
focus of the Cygwin32 distribution is to convert Unix C/C++ based 
source into Wintel (Win32) executables.

	Forgive me for not being able to offer more assistance.

	Peace,

		Paul G.

Chronicles of Aurum: Book I
      A Journey Into the Fantastic
http://www.submergedsoftware.com/
ICQ#977283
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