If you're used to programming for CE, the differences between the regular and compact frameworks are pretty similar to full-blown MFC and what is available on the CE SDKs. Basically, a lot of stuff is missing, some of it pretty important, but since the full version has about 6 ways to do something there is usually at least one that is supported on CE.
For some of the things that are missing (like COM interop) there are third party packages that give you the functionality back.
My biggest gripe is with Windows Forms - the namespace in the regular framework is pretty lacking as far as I'm concerned and once you start pulling out large chunks to make it 'Compact' you end up with your hands tied.
You end up with some pretty terrible kluges. For instance the 'Handle' property in the Control class is not supported, but you really need the underlying HWND a lot of the time for P/Invoke calls. So what you do is P/Invoke 'SetCapture' and then 'GetCapture', which returns the HWND of the window capturing the mouse. This gets wrapped in a 'GetHandle' function so you're not constantly looking at how ugly your code is, but it sucks that you have to jump through such hoops to do pretty basic things.
The microsoft mailing list is actually quite helpful I've found. You can google it here
OpenNETCF.org also has a great forum that has enough traffic that your questions usually get answered (which is something to say for Windows communities). It's here
At the moment the multi-language features for.NET are mostly a parlor trick - everything is more or less identical to C#.
Take VB.NET: it hardly resembles earlier versions of VB. Except for a few minor differences the translations between C# and VB.NET are word for word. It's definately more of a C# dialect than a different language. Have you ever looked at the documentation for.NET? They usually give identical side-by-side implementations in both languages. I have only used C#, but I've yet to come across sample in VB.NET that I couldn't copy and paste into my code, convert the line endings, etc., and have it work.
Granted there might be more of a potential for [fundamentally] different languages running on the CLR (F#, Perl, whatever) but the status quo is C# and other languages that taste almost exactly like C#.
JVM actually has more languages than .NET (CLR)
on
The Future of Java?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
The page you list shows a hundred or so that run on the JVM. A similar page for.NET shows only 27.
Not what the marketing folks at Microsoft would have you believe, huh?
European officials have often pointed out that English spelling is unnecessarily difficult; for example:
cough, plough, rough, through and thorough. What is clearly needed is a phased programme of
changes to iron out these anomalies. The programme would, of course, be administered by a
committee staff at top level by participating nations.
In the first year, for example, the committee would suggest using 's' instead of the soft 'c'. Sertainly,
sivil servants in all sities would resieve this news with joy. Then the hard 'c' could be replaced by 'k'
sinse both letters are pronounsed alike. Not only would this klear up konfusion in the minds of
klerikal workers, but typewriters kould be made with one less letter.
There would be growing enthusiasm when in the sekond year, it was announsed that the troublesome
'ph' would henseforth be written 'f'. This would make words like 'fotograf' twenty persent shorter in
print.
In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reash the stage where
more komplikated shanges are possible. Governments would enkourage the removal of double leters
whish have always been a deterent to akurate speling. We would al agre that the horible mes of silent
'e's in the languag is disgrasful. Therefor we kould drop them and kontinu to read and writ as though
nothing had hapend. By this tim it would be four years sins the skem began and peopl would be
reseptive to steps sutsh as replasing 'th' by 'z'. Perhaps zen ze funktion of 'w' kould be taken on by
'v', vitsh is, after al, half a 'w'. Shortly after zis, ze unesesary 'o kould be dropd from vords kontaining
'ou'. Similar arguments vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
Kontinuing zis proses yer after yer, ve vud eventuli hav a reli sensibl riten styl. After tventi yers zer
vud be no mor trubls, difikultis and evrivun vud find it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drems of the
Guvermnt vud finali hav kum tru.
I'm still hoping for the ultimate in minimalism - the binary keyboard. Yup, just give me two keys and I can type anything. Make them big enough and you could even type with your fists, or maybe make it like the Whack a Mole game.
The thing that would probably cause my the most problems not having a mouse would be using a browser.
I've always thought it would be nice to have a gui browser that was as easy to navigate with the keyboard as lynx but could display tables and images and all the other pretties. Netscape is a real pain in the butt to move through links and such without a mouse
A line by line code review is great, and I would agree that OpenBSD is the most secure OS you can get your hands on, but it cannot prevent all possible exploits
If you think you can just install OpenBSD and not have to know a thing about security, you need to get you head checked.
Re:"I have seen the future of the PC and it is a".
on
The Ottoman PC
·
· Score: 1
just what i need, spend a couple thousand dollars on a computer and one of my friends comes over and pees on the thing...
no kidding... lets face it - security holes pop up on all platforms, *nix, windows, whatever. the key is how a company responds to the holes and m$ doesn't seem to have learned that lesson. they figure they can keep everyone in the dark for as long as possible. the same thing happened with the big iis hack a couple of months ago
Slashdot Mirror
If you're used to programming for CE, the differences between the regular and compact frameworks are pretty similar to full-blown MFC and what is available on the CE SDKs. Basically, a lot of stuff is missing, some of it pretty important, but since the full version has about 6 ways to do something there is usually at least one that is supported on CE.
For some of the things that are missing (like COM interop) there are third party packages that give you the functionality back.
My biggest gripe is with Windows Forms - the namespace in the regular framework is pretty lacking as far as I'm concerned and once you start pulling out large chunks to make it 'Compact' you end up with your hands tied.
You end up with some pretty terrible kluges. For instance the 'Handle' property in the Control class is not supported, but you really need the underlying HWND a lot of the time for P/Invoke calls.
So what you do is P/Invoke 'SetCapture' and then 'GetCapture', which returns the HWND of the window capturing the mouse. This gets wrapped in a 'GetHandle' function so you're not constantly looking at how ugly your code is, but it sucks that you have to jump through such hoops to do pretty basic things.
And that's just the beginning...
Thanks for the link, I'll keep an eye on it.
The microsoft mailing list is actually quite helpful I've found. You can google it here
OpenNETCF.org also has a great forum that has enough traffic that your questions usually get answered (which is something to say for Windows communities).
It's here
At the moment the multi-language features for .NET are mostly a parlor trick - everything is more or less identical to C#.
.NET? They usually give identical side-by-side implementations in both languages. I have only used C#, but I've yet to come across sample in VB.NET that I couldn't copy and paste into my code, convert the line endings, etc., and have it work.
Take VB.NET: it hardly resembles earlier versions of VB. Except for a few minor differences the translations between C# and VB.NET are word for word. It's definately more of a C# dialect than a different language. Have you ever looked at the documentation for
Granted there might be more of a potential for [fundamentally] different languages running on the CLR (F#, Perl, whatever) but the status quo is C# and other languages that taste almost exactly like C#.
The page you list shows a hundred or so that run on the JVM. A similar page for .NET shows only 27.
Not what the marketing folks at Microsoft would have you believe, huh?
I think Mark Twain had a great response to this:
European officials have often pointed out that English spelling is unnecessarily difficult; for example:
cough, plough, rough, through and thorough. What is clearly needed is a phased programme of
changes to iron out these anomalies. The programme would, of course, be administered by a
committee staff at top level by participating nations.
In the first year, for example, the committee would suggest using 's' instead of the soft 'c'. Sertainly,
sivil servants in all sities would resieve this news with joy. Then the hard 'c' could be replaced by 'k'
sinse both letters are pronounsed alike. Not only would this klear up konfusion in the minds of
klerikal workers, but typewriters kould be made with one less letter.
There would be growing enthusiasm when in the sekond year, it was announsed that the troublesome
'ph' would henseforth be written 'f'. This would make words like 'fotograf' twenty persent shorter in
print.
In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reash the stage where
more komplikated shanges are possible. Governments would enkourage the removal of double leters
whish have always been a deterent to akurate speling. We would al agre that the horible mes of silent
'e's in the languag is disgrasful. Therefor we kould drop them and kontinu to read and writ as though
nothing had hapend. By this tim it would be four years sins the skem began and peopl would be
reseptive to steps sutsh as replasing 'th' by 'z'. Perhaps zen ze funktion of 'w' kould be taken on by
'v', vitsh is, after al, half a 'w'. Shortly after zis, ze unesesary 'o kould be dropd from vords kontaining
'ou'. Similar arguments vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.
Kontinuing zis proses yer after yer, ve vud eventuli hav a reli sensibl riten styl. After tventi yers zer
vud be no mor trubls, difikultis and evrivun vud find it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drems of the
Guvermnt vud finali hav kum tru.
I'm still hoping for the ultimate in minimalism - the binary keyboard. Yup, just give me two keys and I can type anything. Make them big enough and you could even type with your fists, or maybe make it like the Whack a Mole game.
Start warming up on those ascii codes...The thing that would probably cause my the most problems not having a mouse would be using a browser.
I've always thought it would be nice to have a gui browser that was as easy to navigate with the keyboard as lynx but could display tables and images and all the other pretties. Netscape is a real pain in the butt to move through links and such without a mouse
A line by line code review is great, and I would agree that OpenBSD is the most secure OS you can get your hands on, but it cannot prevent all possible exploits
If you think you can just install OpenBSD and not have to know a thing about security, you need to get you head checked.
just what i need, spend a couple thousand dollars on a computer and one of my friends comes over and pees on the thing...
no kidding...
lets face it - security holes pop up on all platforms, *nix, windows, whatever. the key is how a company responds to the holes and m$ doesn't seem to have learned that lesson. they figure they can keep everyone in the dark for as long as possible.
the same thing happened with the big iis hack a couple of months ago