C / C++ / MFC

24-Apr-04 22:33

Hai all,

Im planning to do a project which can remotely access a pc. For that i want to find, whether there is any change in the clients display.

But when i hook WM_PAINT, a lot of paint messages are comming even if the machine is idle.

Can anyone tell me an idea to solve this ? thanx in advance.

Regards,
Jijo.

________________________________

Yesterday is history,
Tomorrow is a mystery,
But today is a present.

User 665825-Apr-04 0:30

User 6658

25-Apr-04 0:30

Have you tried the WM_DISPLAYCHANGE message?

modified 12-Sep-18 21:01pm.

Jijo.Raj25-Apr-04 3:11

25-Apr-04 3:11

Dear Greeeg,

Thanx a lot for your valuable reply. But one doubt. When i tried to spy the WM_DISPLAYCHANGE message using Spy++, i can't find any WM_DISPLAYCHANGE message generating, when i open/move/close windows. Please clear this doubt.

Regards,
Jijo.

________________________________

Yesterday is history,
Tomorrow is a mystery,
But today is a present.

grigsoft25-Apr-04 5:31

grigsoft

25-Apr-04 5:31

Unless you are doing this as programming excersize, I could recommend forgetting it. Either use existing tool(RAdmin, NetMeeting, PCAnywhere) for your own needs, or find another tool to create for selling.
Catching image is just a beginning, and if you have problems with it, probably you are not good enough to do it. No offences, I'm also not qualified enough. But you will have to find a way for real-time image differencing and packing. Or did you think you could get enough perfomance by sending full screen/window image over a network? Think again. And finally you will stuck at what a friend of mine did, he made all this path, only to find out that to get true speed he have to develop special screen driver (as far as I understood), which market leaders already have. Otherwise you have speed limit that you will reach by making a screenshot - just consider copying, comparison and packing of 1024x768x16bit = 1.5 Mg image and do it 10-20 times per second.
PS. WM_DISPLAYCHANGE comes when screen resolution changes.

Igor Green
http://www.grigsoft.com/ - files and folders comparison tools

Jijo.Raj25-Apr-04 21:03

25-Apr-04 21:03

Dear Igor,

Thanks for ur valuable reply. Im just doing this project for improving my knowledge. Big Grin | :-D

And now i understood that the full screencapture method was utter foolishness. Cry | :((

And will you please explane that screen driver method, more clearly ? is that hooking the display driver ? or something like that ? Can you please provide me some helpful links about that ?

Regards,
Jijo. Wink | ;)

________________________________

Yesterday is history,
Tomorrow is a mystery,
But today is a present.

grigsoft25-Apr-04 21:16

grigsoft

25-Apr-04 21:16

No, sorry, I don't know the details myself. But for your own needs screen capturing is good enough. As far as I could understood, that 'driver' just provide you direct access to screen picture, which let you skip one step from process - preparing and copying picture to intenal bitmap. Still you have to do all differencing and packing yourself.

Igor Green
http://www.grigsoft.com/ - files and folders comparison tools

Jijo.Raj26-Apr-04 2:40

How's about memory size usage

26-Apr-04 2:40

okay Igor... Thanx a lot.

Regards,
Jijo.

________________________________

Yesterday is history,
Tomorrow is a mystery,
But today is a present.

nguyenvhn24-Apr-04 20:11

24-Apr-04 20:11

<br />
typedef struct{<br />
  char buff[20];<br />
} my_struct;<br />
<br />
my_struct my_arr[1000][30][10][10][3];<br />
<br />
int main(){    <br />
  for ( int a = 0; a < 1000; ++a )        <br />
  for ( int b = 0; b < 30; ++b )            <br />
  for ( int c = 0; c < 10; ++c )                <br />
  for ( int d = 0; d < 10; ++d )                    <br />
  for ( int e = 0; e < 3; ++e )                    <br />
  {                        <br />
    my_arr[a][b][c][d][e].buff[0]='0';<br />
    my_arr[a][b][c][d][e].buff[19]='9';<br />
  }<br />
  return 0;<br />
}<br />

In previous thread, I have asked about the problem when using large data. Thanks so much for all of your replying.

I based on yours comment to check my code again and I found that I had a mistake. Yes, the program run normally.

Here I had changed code to another type:

<br />
typedef struct{<br />
  CByteArray buff;<br />
} my_struct;<br />
<br />
typedef struct{<br />
  my_struct dat[30][10][10][3];<br />
} data;<br />
<br />
CArray<data, data&> my_arr;<br />

In CWinApp::InitInstance():

<br />
  int n=1000<br />
  my_arr.SetSize(n);<br />
  for ( int a = 0; a < n; ++a )        <br />
  for ( int b = 0; b < 30; ++b )            <br />
  for ( int c = 0; c < 10; ++c )                <br />
  for ( int d = 0; d < 10; ++d )                    <br />
  for ( int e = 0; e < 3; ++e )                    <br />
  {                        <br />
    my_arr[a].dat[b][c][d][e].buff.SetSize(1);<br />
  }<br />
}<br />

I tested n from 100 to 1000 and CArray seem to be not effective. When n>=500, the program run more slowly. And when n=1000, the system alerted that out of virtual memory.
Please note that the buff size is only 1 (beside 20 in previous version)

In my project, buff size is varying.
n is about 300-800
All remaining size of array are const

Here are my questions:

In this case, which is my best solution (Using CArray or not)?

If anyone has experience in using CArray and processing large data, please give me a hint.

Thank you very much.

Mike Nordell25-Apr-04 6:19

Mike Nordell

25-Apr-04 6:19

nguyenvhn wrote:

typedef struct{
CByteArray buff;
} my_struct;

typedef struct{
my_struct dat[30][10][10][3];
} data;

CArray<data, data&> my_arr;

From a cursory glance at MFC code, and unless I made a severe mistake:

You are aware that every element in my_arr is of type data, which is holding nine thousand CByteArray's? CByteArray's which each are of size 20 bytes and requires construction, including construction of parent class object CObject? So just one single instance of data at minimum requires 180.000 bytes.

For 'n' in your code you are:

1. Creating m = n * 9000 CByteArray's, for a total of at least m * 20 bytes.

2. Iterating over those m ByteArrays, calling SetSize for them, which allocates at least 16 (or is it 32, I really don't remember the allocation granularity of the SBH) bytes each, for a size of m*16 or m*32 bytes.

This becomes m*(20+16) or m*(20+32) bytes, minimum.

If n=1, you allocate at least 324.000 bytes.

If n=1000, you allocate at least 324.000.000 bytes.

Should SBH allocation granularity be 32, then you would get a memory load of about 446MB just to hold those nine million bytes. Should you use the debug heap, I think you can safely add another m*16 or m*32 bytes (for a memory load between 446 and 720MB respectively).

Just to create the nine million *holders* of the data, not the data itself, for the n=1000 case, you use 180 million bytes.

In my project, buff size is varying.

I suggest you at minimum should stop using MFC for collections (CByteArray even have a vfptr!), and start using a custom allocator.

In this case, which is my best solution (Using CArray or not)?

Not.

To be completely honest I'd say using any MFC collection class is almost always the wrong thing, but that's a completely different discussion.

nguyenvhn25-Apr-04 21:23

25-Apr-04 21:23

Thank you very much.

I have no knowledge about custom allocator. Could you tell me more about it?

In addition, Could you give me an article to make more clearly that "using any MFC collection class is almost always the wrong thing"? And so that, what is the true replacement? Please, I am using Visual C++ and MFC as the main programming framework.

I hope to get lot of useful information from you.
Thanks again.

Mike Nordell26-Apr-04 4:14

Mike Nordell

26-Apr-04 4:14

nguyenvhn wrote:
Could you give me an article to make more clearly that "using any MFC collection class is almost always the wrong thing"?

Once you gain more experience in C++, It'll come to you.

But to give a starting place, you might want to Google some news.

And so that, what is the true replacement?

There is no silver bullet.

Paul Ranson25-Apr-04 6:45

Paul Ranson

25-Apr-04 6:45

I don't remember anything about the MFC collection classes, and I plan for it to remain that way.

Can you tell us something about your application?

Paul

nguyenvhn25-Apr-04 21:38

25-Apr-04 21:38

Thanks for your replying.

In before, my application has done well. But now the size of data is increase very high. My application must deal with its but I dont want to write new application from scratch. I want to update from old source code.

In old version, I used the following declare:

my_struct my_arr[C][W][D][P][S] with my_struct's size is 20 bytes as mention in previous thread.

C, W, D, P, S are const and C=120.

Now C can be 1000. I think my data structure may be too large.

Could you give me any idea or example to solver this kind of problem?

Thank you.

Paul Ranson26-Apr-04 1:16

Paul Ranson

26-Apr-04 1:16

If your 'my_struct' can remain 20 bytes then the following works for variable 'C', I don't recommend any type of container since the overhead of managing it and implementing 'operator[]' is probably going to be significant.

The total allocation is 180MB, this is much less than commonly fitted as main RAM to modern PCs so the quantitiy per se isn't too much. You do need to consider how you access it in order to work with the CPU data caches rather than against them, but without knowing what you do to the data I can't help there.

struct my_struct
{
    char buff [ 20 ] ;
} ;

typedef my_struct my_struct_array [ 30 ][ 10 ][ 10 ][ 3 ] ;
const unsigned my_arr_size = 1000 ;

int main()
{
    my_struct_array * my_arr = new my_struct_array [ my_arr_size ] ;

    for ( unsigned a = 0; a < my_arr_size; ++a )
        for ( unsigned b = 0; b < 30; ++b )
            for ( unsigned c = 0; c < 10; ++c )
                for ( unsigned d = 0; d < 10; ++d )
                    for ( unsigned e = 0; e < 3; ++e )
                    {
                        my_arr [ a ][ b ][ c ][ d ][ e ].buff [ 0 ] = '0' ;
                        my_arr [ a ][ b ][ c ][ d ][ e ].buff [ 19 ] = '9' ;
                    }
    delete [] my_arr ;

    return 0;
}

Paul

nguyenvhn26-Apr-04 15:16