Introduction
This demo shows how to create a process to open a second window and pass data and Windows messages to the second window. The CreateProcess() function can either start a module or start a command line module. You could, for example, open a new command line window "notepad.exe", and pass it command line arguments.
This demo uses both interfaces. The code for this can be found in: ConsoleDemo.cpp. It is constructed before the dialog box is opened. The module now has to be tied to a CWnd pointer, this is done with the "FindWindow()" function. FindWindow will try to point to a window that matches the window title of the module. Now that we have a pointer initialized, we can pass it data using WM_COPYDATA Windows message. MyWindow is a Win32 Application only because I needed a message handler, you could use a Win32 Console Application and pass it command line arguments only.
Command.exe is the third window, it's a simple application that processes only command line information and calls system() function. ConsoleDemo has four commands:
- "new" causes the other window to be redrawn using a custom
WM_USER message.
- "exit" which first closes the other window and then closes itself.
- "dir" displays the current directory and,
- "ver" displays the Windows version which are command line arguments.
Command.exe waits for the user to press any key and closes itself. Note: when you drag or resize ConsoleDemo's dialog box, the other window is sent WM_ERASEBKGND message, then you can use the "new" command to invalidate its window. All three modules have a post-build step that copies its Release executable to the ConsoleDemo directory.
*** VERY IMPORTANT *** ConsoleDemo is looking for the other two windows to be in the same directory as ConsoleDemo, therefore you must do a Release Build of MyWindow and Command before running ConsoleDemo. Any comments are welcome.
