The Old New Thing - All Comments

re: Untangling the confusingly-named WM_UPDATEUISTATE and WM_CHANGEUISTATE messages

Mark S — Sat, 18 May 2013 20:27:19 GMT

Well, appears the answer is "not at all": I had been trying to chime in with kinokijuf but oh well. (My comment about the blog software was not out of left field; I suspected my comment had been eaten).

re: Untangling the confusingly-named WM_UPDATEUISTATE and WM_CHANGEUISTATE messages

Mark S — Sat, 18 May 2013 20:22:22 GMT

Speaking of usability, how sad that this blog software is still so terrible at the simple task of taking in and displaying comments. Is my previous comment submitted once, twice, not at all? Shrug!

re: Your electric fan is trying to kill you, and other cultural superstitions

Steve — Sat, 18 May 2013 09:42:28 GMT

My mother said that if you swallowed chewing gum it would stick you bum together. That may have been more humour than belief in hindsight.

re: Your electric fan is trying to kill you, and other cultural superstitions

Lev — Sat, 18 May 2013 05:30:32 GMT

@Martin McNulty, "Shoes upon the table" have been immortalized in the musical "blood brothers". But even if they don't bring bad luck, they make your table dirty, and if you happen to put the fork where the shoes stood and then eat with it, you might get bad luck... Unless you've never worn those shoes.

re: Who sends the initial WM_UPDATEUISTATE message?

Crescens2k — Sat, 18 May 2013 04:12:46 GMT

I obviously over thought this. It has been a hard week and I was looking for problems where they didn't exist.

Well, the dialog controls need to exist before it initialises the UI states, but from what I understand of the dialog creation procedure, it is:

Get dialog template from somewhere (either resource, or via parameter)

Create main dialog window using CreateWindowEx.

Create child controls for dialog window using CreateWindowEx.

Send WM_INITDIALOG message to the main dialog window.

Show the window if the visible flag is set.

For DialogBox only, run its own message pump.

Since the WM_CREATE message is sent to a window before CreateWindowEx returns. By the time the WM_CREATE handler returns there are no controls at all. This means the window manager can't do it automatically after WM_CREATE finishes processing because the controls don't exist and the UI state initialisation requires the child controls to exist first.

Hopefully I haven't overthought things this time.

re: Your electric fan is trying to kill you, and other cultural superstitions

Audun — Sat, 18 May 2013 00:21:23 GMT

Oh, and could it be that the Koreans were talking about their electric worshiping/admirer devices, and not electrical hot/cold air devices? I sure can imagine those causing harm if left unsupervised.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

re: Your electric fan is trying to kill you, and other cultural superstitions

Joe — Fri, 17 May 2013 22:58:47 GMT

1. Salt causes high blood pressure (associative not causal)

2. You can't swim for at least 30 minutes after eating

3. when I was growing up the wrestling coach wouldn't let us drink any water while we ran because it would "cause cramps" (dehydration anybody??)

4. Fat is bad for you

5. if you read in low-light you'll go blind

re: Who sends the initial WM_UPDATEUISTATE message?

Crescens2k — Fri, 17 May 2013 21:13:18 GMT

"Exercise: Why can't the window manager do this automatically after WM_CREATE returns?"

Well, from the CREATESTRUCT documentation for lpCreateParams" member.

"If the window is being created from a dialog template, this member is the address of a SHORT value that specifies the size, in bytes, of the window creation data. The value is immediately followed by the creation data."

Since the CREATESTRUCT is only given to CreateWindow(Ex) and not stored anywhere else, the information that the window manager and anything else needs would be gone after the WM_CREATE message has finished processing.

[Not sure how the CREATESTRUCT is involved. The question is "Why can't the window manager initialize the UI states when the window returns from its WM_CREATE handler?" -Raymond]

re: Your electric fan is trying to kill you, and other cultural superstitions

Audun — Fri, 17 May 2013 20:47:18 GMT

Growing up in Norther Norway, where the Aurora ( en.wikipedia.org/.../Aurora_(astronomy) ) is common during winter, the generation me were told not to wave at the sky during the Aurora, or evil spirits would descend and abduct you.

re: Your electric fan is trying to kill you, and other cultural superstitions

Nicholas — Fri, 17 May 2013 19:21:24 GMT

> Somehow, hot soup (traditionally eaten before other courses) manages to avoid diluting precious bodily fluids.

In that context (Russian superstitions), this sentence made me laugh out loud. (en.wikipedia.org/.../Dr._Strangelove) Well done :)