From: sandrof AT microsoft DOT com (Alessandro Forin) Subject: RE: Undocumented API's 6 Dec 1996 21:28:52 -0800 Sender: daemon AT cygnus DOT com Approved: cygnus DOT gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com Distribution: cygnus Message-ID: Original-To: "'Jeremy Allison'" Original-Cc: "'GNU-Win32'" X-Mailer: Microsoft Exchange Server Internet Mail Connector Version 4.0.994.63 Encoding: 51 TEXT Original-Sender: owner-gnu-win32 AT cygnus DOT com [Big foot in mouth coming, pinch your nose] I spoke out of temper, without thinking, and I said some stupid things. Apologies to all, especially those who really dont give a damn about this thread [like myself]. There are two sets of APIs captured by those two DLLs I indicated: the user-mode, Win32 APIs, and the kernel-mode APIs. The former are documented in the VC++ Win32 help files, the latter only in the DDKs (DDK, HAL, IFS). The NT group's policy is that unless it is documented in an SDKs or a DDKs they dont feel like committing to a certain API. The only officially supported user API sets are Win32, OS/2, and POSIX. As you realize, all of these APIs have external constraints that make them non-NT-specific. The company does not want to give birth to yet another kernel interface, therefore there are no official NT-specific user APIs. The documented NT-specific APIs are for device drivers, running in kernel mode, and even those will become common to NT and Win95 (with the WDM model). As someone else pointed out, cgwin32 should rely only on the Win32 APIs (because they are) supported on NT *and* Win95. The OpenNT thing is targeting NT exclusively [and I dont know nothing about it except press releases]. The article you pointed out contains noise and one data point: the "cancel I/O" thing. What they meant was that in kernel mode (e.g. it wont help you) it is possible to cancel an IRP (I/O Request Packet), but that device driver writers are strongly discouraged from doing this. [And since I have written device drivers myself, I really dont see why you should get in the woods of using such approach (just return the IRP with error, right ?).] Now I swear big time, no matter what you do or say I am not going to speak on this again. sandro- > - For help on using this list, send a message to "gnu-win32-request AT cygnus DOT com" with one line of text: "help".