What's new?

18 februari 2002

Lan Manager header files (lm*.h).

Reason for this addition is twofold:

  1. The LM.pas interface unit included in this package was getting out of synch with the original from Petr and errors were creeping in. Conversion from scratch was imo the only way to remove all these errors.
  2. The original LM interface units were done by Petr and his copyright. This somewhat limits me in my freedom to do as I want with those units.

Petr's original LM interface unit is still included (JwaLM.pas) for those that are already using it. New development should use either Petr's original units (available from http://www.delphi-jedi.org) or the new units included in this release (the individual JwaLmXYZ.pas units, not JwaLM.pas). Existing applications should continue to use the JwaLM.pas unit as the new units are different in many aspects (e.g. in the conversion of parameters, types and so forth). Eventually JwaLM.pas from Petr will be removed...

Up to date with November 2002 Platform SDK

The units are now up to date with the November 2002 release of the Platform SDK. This means that the included units are up to date with their equivalent header files in the PSDK, not that all header files are converted - obviously.. The only files that are not yet up to date are:

Hopefully I'll be able to attend to these soon.

8 januari 2002

The most significant change in this release is the addition of dynamic linking support for all units. By default dynamic linking is turned off, to turn on dynamic linking remove the dot in the line:

  {.$DEFINE DYNAMIC_LINK}
  

inside WinDefines.inc. In this release this will turn on dynamic linking for all interface units, in a future release I might add support to contorl this on a unit-by-unit basis. Dynamic linking is supported by using a small assembler stub that loads the DLL on demand only when the routine is actually used. There is no need to call any special initialization routine, all happens automatically. Thanks goes out to the guys in borland.public.delphi.basm for their help in implementing this.

Please note that currently there is no way to find out upfront whether or not a required library is present on the system other than explicitly testing this yourself using LoadLibrary(), a future release might add support for this. In case the required library is not present on the system, an exception is raised. The exception is either EJwaLoadLibraryError or EJwaGetProcAddressError (both defined in JwaWinType and descended from EJwaError) if LoadLibrary() or GetProcAddress() fails respectively. Therefor, you'll need to protect your API calls using a try...except block like this:

  var
    H: HANDLE;
  begin
    try
      H := CreateFile(...);
      if H <> INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE then
      begin
        ...
        CloseHandle(H);
      end;
    except
      on EJwaError do
      begin
        // Either CreateFile or CloseHandle could not be found, handle that
        // situation somehow.
      end;
    end;
  end;
  

Known issues

Sponsorship and contributing

Converting header files is a lot of work which I do completely in my own time. If you've found these units usefull, like the fact that they're completely free, and like to contribute to further development and the conversion of even more header files you can do so in many ways. Contact me at brakelm@chello.nl for further information.

One possible way, and a nice gesture, would be to buy me something of my wish-list.

Installation

The Win32 interface units do not need explicit installation but you do need to make sure that Delphi can find them. There are two ways to accomplish this, using Project Options or Environment Options. First you need to extract the zip into a directory of your liking, we'll refer to this directory as $(WIN32API). Now follow either of the steps outlined in the next two sections.

Using Project Options

From the IDE menu select "Project > Options" and switch to the "Directories/Conditionals" page in the dialog that appears. Find the edit box labelled "Search Path", type in the $(WIN32API) path and select OK. Alternatively you can use the ellipsis button to navigate to the directory in question. You will need to repeat this for every new project you start that uses the Win32 API interface units.

Using Environment Options

From the IDE menu select "Tools > Environment Options" and switch to the "Library" page in the dialog that appears. Find the edit box labelled "Library Path", it should contain something along the lines of "$(DELPHI)\Lib;$(DELPHI)\Bin;$(DELPHI)\Imports;$(DELPHI)\Projects\Bpl". Change this to include the $(WIN32API) directory. For example, assuming you've unzipped the Win32Api.zip file to "c:\win32api":
"$(DELPHI)\Lib;$(DELPHI)\Bin;$(DELPHI)\Imports;$(DELPHI)\Projects\Bpl;c:\win32api". Don't forget to seperate using a semicolon. You don't have to manually edit this string, you can press the ellipsis button to navigate to the $(WIN32API) directory and add it automatically. After pressing OK Delphi will be able to find the units for every new project without the need to specify the directory again.

If you performed the steps above you can start using the units in your application by including the appropriate ones in your uses clause. I personally prefer to use Project Options instead of Environment Options to avoid problems. One known problem is that when you use the Enironment Options method, you might get compiler errors when trying to build the JEDI Code Library.

Using the units

When you use these interface units keep in mind that they duplicate a lot of what's in the interface units that ship with Delphi, such as Windows.pas. These units can co-exist but you need to make sure that you do not mix the usage of them too much. For example, either use Windows.pas or the equivalents in this library but not both, otherwise you might run into incompatibilities between them resulting in compile errors. The easiest way is to not include both in the uses clause of your own units. If this is impossible for some reason you're best of using explicit unit qualification when using anything. For example, instead of using "CreateProcess" use either "Windows.CreateProcess" or "JwaWinBase.CreateProcess". If you do not use unit qualification you end up using the one from the unit last mentioned in the uses clause.

The most common error you're likely to encounter is: "Incompatible types: 'System.WideChar' and 'JwaWinType'.WideChar" where WideChar is only an example. This is due to the fact that the RTL (e.g. System.pas or Windows.pas) defines the type WideChar differently from WinType.pas. To solve this simply change the declaration in JwaWinType.pas to become an alias for the type in System.pas (or Windows.pas). For example Before:

  type
    DWORD = Longword;
  
After:
  type
    DWORD = Windows.DWORD;
  
If you look inside JwaWinType.pas you see that I've already done this for the most common types (using conditional compilation) like this
  type
    DWORD = {$IFDEF USE_DELPHI_TYPES}Windows.DWORD{$ELSE}Longword{$ENDIF};
  
therefore it's unlikely you'll run into this problem. However, if you do please notify me so I can update the interface units.

Please note that these units heavily use conditional compilation. You can globally change some settings, and thereby determine how they get compiled, through the WinDefines.inc include file. An example of this would be to specify an unicode build. There are a few more directives which cannot be set globally (yet), look through the unit itself to find them. Full documentation for all directives will be provided in a later release.

Also note that all LanManager units (LM*.pas) were combined into a single unit LM.pas for convenience. The same applies to the Ads*.pas units which were combined into ActiveDS.pas and all Rpc*.pas files which were combined into Rpc.pas. Furthermore, the LanManager translation was done by Petr Vones and is included with his permission. The WinLDAP unit was created by Luk Vermeulen.

Copyright

These units are distributed under the terms of of the MPL, or optionally the terms of the LGPL. What this means is that they are completely free and can be used in all development, even commercial applications. I have a few requests though:

Please be aware that the WinLDAP unit was created by Luk Vermeulen and can only be used and distributed under the MPL license. It's included because of dependencies on this unit. I may convert the header myself one day.

Coming soon

Feedback

Any and all feedback can be send to brakelm@chello.nl. Please do not send me any generic API related questions, for that you should use the Borland newsgroups (see the Borland Community site for more information). Questions directly related to the use, or problems encountered by the use of, these units can of course be directed at the above address. Please include the phrase "Win32Api" in the subject header.

Request an interface unit

If you're in desperate need of an interface unit for some C/C++ API you can send me a request through e-mail. I cannot promise that I will convert the unit(s) within any particular time frame, or at all, but I will let you know about it. Note that you can also hire me to do header conversions, in that case I will guarentee delivery within a certain time frame which depends on the header(s) themselves. Mail me at the above address for more information.