Oct 2024 How to get into Win 3.11 programming in C

First you'll need the book Programming Windows 3.1 by Charles Petzold (I got the original which is extra fun) and get a little bit onboarded about Windows programming. His instructions are about compiling programs in DOS, however I chose to work with Visual C++ 1.52. Don't expect it to be very visual, it's not like Visual Basic, but it at least runs in Windows, making it much quicker to test applications. It also comes with debugging tools and a resource editor where you can easily build UI, dialogs, even draw icons. The help files are quite good, especially useful is the Windows 3.1 API reference.

Windows applications written in C follow a very predictable pattern so it's not gonna be as hard to master it as it first seems. 16-bit Windows had cooperative multitasking. This means, the OS and applications pass on control to each other constantly. At every little thing the OS does (e.g. before starting to draw a button), you can take control and even override the OS's action, e.g. fill buttons with a different color than the OS would. But the OS always has to get back control, otherwise the system will freeze. It's also crazy how permissive the system was, compared to anything today.

Why not Visual Basic though?

Basic is very limited compared to C and VB applications must be distributed with an installer (I prefer compact/standalone apps). However you can combine the simplicity of VB and the power of C by coding VB components in C and embedding them in your VB application.

Level up

Once you're comfortable writing Windows applications and you want to learn real insider tricks, check out MSDN CDs from around 1994-1995. I'm currently looking into how to display 256 color images. This is not straightforward and not described in any Win 3.11 API documentation, but I've found an example application on MSDN. Would be awesome to create a 256-color game or multimedia CD for Win 3.11 (and Mac OS9 as well!).

Btw if you're interested in graphics, you can go beyond Windows's default graphics device interface (GDI) and utilize WinG, which is more similar to DirectX and allows direct hardware access. Also with Win32s it's possible to run 32-bit programs and libraries (ok I am not sure what I'm talking about now), but note that WinG and Win32s are not part of a default Win3.x install, your application has to be delivered with them if it needs them. I prefer compact .exe applications without installers so I don't use these. If you get into Win3.x programming, let me know, I'm curious why and what you create!

Oct 2024 Let's buy into the PowerPC ecosystem

Classic Mac programming (I'm most focused on the late 90s era) is a little bit different from Windows. Apparently native coding was so complicated that nobody did it, in some cases not even Apple. Instead everyone used Metrowerks PowerPlant CodeWarrior (it has so many names, I never know which one to use!), it's an SDK and set of libraries that makes app development very simple, but at the end you still get a native compiled application - not something that relies on additional software like HyperCard or Visual Basic. You can create "Fat binaries" which run natively both on Motorola and PowerPC Macs!

Here I show you my practical approach for noobs (like me) on getting started.

Ingredients:

• A fresh install of MacOS9 lives on a PowerPC Mac. Using an emulator was a bit ugh for me... impossible to type all the brackets needed for coding.
• Archive managers like Roxio Toast and StuffIt, because everything from that era is distributed in these formats.
• "CodeWarrior 5 Gold" on a CD
• The book and CD: "Metrowerks CodeWarrior Programming" (1995) by Dan Parks Sydow

Setting up was so not straightforward, I took notes how to do the next time. Please mind, there might be slight inaccuracies here! Also my setup is specifically for PowerPC applications, the book will guide you through other options as well.

1. Install MacOS9 Lives
2. Copy CW5 Gold CD to the HDD. Don't install it, it will screw up the system
3. Copy the book's CD as well
4. Copy the contents of the relevant folders from CW5 Gold/"Metrowerks C/C++ f"/(System Folder Items)/Will install in PPC f/ to the Extensions and Startup folders of your system. The source folder names will make this self-explanatory.
5. Configure the Find feature - Explained in pages 68-71 in the book, you dont necessarily need to do it now, enough when you're at the right place in the book. You'll need to add this folder: CW5 Gold/"Metrowerks C/C++ f"/Headers f/Universal Headers 2.0a3 f

Then it's useful to create desktop aliases for apps you'll often need:

• The Metrowerks code editor and compiler: CW5 Gold/"Metrowerks C/C++ f"/"MW C/C++ PPC 1.2"
• "ResEdit" for creating resources, such as windows: CW5 Gold/Apple Development Products f/ResEdit 2.1.3
• "Constructor" for creating PowerPlant-speficific resources: CW5 Gold/Metrowerks PowerPlant f/Constructor 1.0.1

Then: go ahead with the book! It's super well written and easy to follow. I really hope I can get back to this soon because it's heaps of fun. But I'm quite Mac'd out on another project that I'll soon reveal.

I will post web dev resources here - just a placeholder now, sorry!