Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!rocksanne!news
From: Ray Wong <h2o@magic.ca>
Subject: Problem (bug?) with Visual Smalltalk API interface
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Date: Sat, 28 Oct 1995 05:23:55 GMT
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Tried using Visual Smalltalk V3.0.1 to access some WIN32 APIs 
such as the communications area.  To my frustration, and many 
wasted hours, it seems I have discovered that when you ask for a 
structure to be filled with data from WIN32 API, the data is 
returned in a compressed data structure format.  The big kicker 
is that the current Visual Smalltalk ExternalBuffer class which 
is the SuperClass for all the structures used by Digitalk, does 
not provide any support for decompressing these compressed 
structures.  When I checked with the structures created under 
ExternalBuffer by Digitalk, none them are represented in the 
WIN32 SDK would return a complex compressed structure.  The 
documentation is of course useful as usual in matters like this. 
 Has anyone else out there encountered a similar situation when 
trying to interact with any WIN32 APIs??  Myself the structure 
I'm having trouble with is the Communications structure DCB ( 
Device Control Block )... Thanks.. Ray Wong
