Detect DOS window minimization, how to?

[Mark Hunter]

Say you have a PB DOS program running in a
DOS window, and the window gets minimized
(either by the user or the operating system).
Is there a way for your program to detect
that it is minimized, say by checking
something in the getkey loop?

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[Eric Pearson]

DOS applications can't really access Windows directly, at least not easily. They are almost 100% isolated -- Microsoft calls it "protected" -- from the operating system.

You can, however, use a Windows Console application to "link" a DOS program to Windows. My company's DOSBox product was designed to do exactly that.

The free shareware version of DOSBox is available from this page of our web site...

http://www.perfectsync.com/DOSBox.htm

It will allow your PB/DOS applications to determine -- and control! -- things like the maximized/minimized state of the DOS box.

-- Eric Pearson, Perfect Sync Software


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Perfect Sync: Perfect Sync Development Tools
Email: mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>

[This message has been edited by Eric Pearson (edited February 26, 2001).]

[Lance Edmonds]

A DOS application can directly switch to full-screen mode with a simple Interrupt call, but as Eric noted, there is no facility for the DOS application to detect a window state change, or select any state other than full-screen.

When I get back to my DEV PC, I'll post the code to switch to full-screen mode (if you are interested, that is!).


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Lance
PowerBASIC Support
mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>

[Lance Edmonds]

Here you go...

' Switch to Full-Screen under Windows 3.x/95/98/ME/2000/NT
IF BIT(pbvHost,8) OR UCASE$(ENVIRON$("OS")) = "WINDOWS_NT" THEN
  IF ISFALSE BIT(pbvHost,5) THEN      ' Not if we are in the IDE
    ! push DS
    ! mov AX,&H168B
    ! xor BX,BX
    ! int &H2F
    ! pop DS
  END IF
END IF

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Lance
PowerBASIC Support
mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>

[Michael Mattias]

The free shareware version of DOSBox is available from this page of our web site...

Huh? Free Shareware?

MCM

[Eric Pearson]

Yes, we have a Free (95% functional) version, and a Registered (fully functional, but not free) version.

Isn't that a relatively common way for shareware to be provided?

(I was trying to point out that the free version would do what Mark was asking about.)

-- Eric

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Perfect Sync: Perfect Sync Development Tools
Email: mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>

[This message has been edited by Eric Pearson (edited February 27, 2001).]

[Mark Hunter]

Thanks for your response, Eric. Also Lance.

If there is no pure PB solution, the next
best thing would be to prevent the user from
going to Windows via Ctrl-Esc, Alt-Spacebar,
or the Windows key.

This has been discussed before on this Forum,
under "Capture the Windows key" -- where Lance
recalled that an MS utility once existed for
disabling the Windows key. But again a pure
PB solution would be desirable.

One solution would be to run the entire program
as a CriticalSection (see the thread I started a
few days ago). That looks like it's the only
way.