Deployment problem on Win98

Hello,

I've created an exe with Lagoon and an Installer with InnoSetup. I
*think* I have included all the necessary dlls.

A friend of mine on Tenerife is running Win98 on her system, the
application installs fine, runs ok up to a certain point, but 2 things
don't work period:

        1. code that should open a FileSave- or a FilOpenDialog
        2. the buttons in the menu bar show no icons, however OAs
           resource dll is included.

Am I missing a library to include or should I better drop the attempt to
deploy to Win98, which I'd love to do, alas not my choice.


Günther

"Günther Schmidt" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...
We would suggest the latter. Win98 has now gone out of support from
Microsoft (as of July 11th), and they are not even producing security
updates for it now. Frankly this means it is no longer sensible to continue
using it (some might argue it never was :-)).

In line with this, we have decided to drop all support for 16-bit Windows as
well. You might be able to get existing stuff working on there by hacking
around to address platform incompatibilities, but really your best bet for
Win9x is back-level Dolphin 5.x. The forthcoming service pack release of
Dolphin 6 (6.03) will no longer run on Win9x at all: Neither the IDE, nor
deployed apps, because the VM is now using some system calls that are not
supported on OSs prior to Windows 2000.

Regards

Object Arts

Hi Object Arts,

> Frankly this means it is no longer sensible to continue
> using it (some might argue it never was :-)).

While I agree with this sentiment ...

> The forthcoming service pack release of
> Dolphin 6 (6.03) will no longer run on Win9x at all: Neither the IDE, nor
> deployed apps, because the VM is now using some system calls that are not
> supported on OSs prior to Windows 2000.

Ouch. Will 6.03 images work with 6.02 stubs?

This seems to be a big change for a patch level. I know this has been
on the cards for a while, and I remember similar discussions during the
beta ... but why now? ... why the new system calls?

Mind you, I am not all that disappointed (it's the straw that breaks
the camel's back for me) ... but effectively, your decision does force
me to drop future support for Win9x, so it would be nice to know why.

Thanks (I think!)
Steve
--
[hidden email]

Steve,

> Mind you, I am not all that disappointed (it's the straw that breaks
> the camel's back for me) ... but effectively, your decision does force
> me to drop future support for Win9x, so it would be nice to know why.

The recent discussion about the unreliability of Ctrl-Break in being
able to break (or context switch) out of some loops prompted Blair into
action. The improvements in this area apparently rely on some Windows
feature not available in Win98. Blair will be able to explain this more
fully.

The other more general problem was that, because the development
environment of X6 no long runs on Win98 anyway, it was very difficult
to test that the runtime itself performed adequately on that platform.
In this regard I think it was actually over optimistic on our part to
have suggested that X6 applications could be deployed for Win98 since
we really couldn't properly verify this claim (apart from quickly
running up Hello World and Personal Money just before a release).
 
Best regards,

Andy Bower
Dolphin Support
www.object-arts.com

> The recent discussion about the unreliability of Ctrl-Break in being
> able to break (or context switch) out of some loops prompted Blair into
> action.

Now this is great :-)

Ciao

...Jochen

Hi Andy,

Thanks for the information.

Sorry for being a pain, but I would like to register my interest in
Blair making the new system calls conditional on the OS ... if this is
possible.

> The other more general problem was that, because the development
> environment of X6 no long runs on Win98 anyway,

It is not pretty, but 6.02 still runs on Win98. I just did the
experiment again ... install DolphinSetupX6.exe ... Install a fresh
image (this doesn't seem to work, but it still registers my keycode)
... Copy a semi-fresh image (no splash, no help tip) over from an XP
machine.

The image opens ... there are problems, but the CHB basically works,
and you can definitely evaluate code in a Workspace (even slideys work
... although the pin image is missing). Below is a link to a screenshot
of D6 on Win98SE

http://www.stevewaring.net/images/d6-win98.png

> we really couldn't properly verify this claim (apart from quickly
> running up Hello World and Personal Money just before a release).

That is fair enough. I would be happy if you dropped all support/claims
for Win98.

As it stands in 6.02, I still have the option of at least trying to
workaround any Win98 problems, and IMO, it is fairly easy to do this
because I can get the development image running on Win98. However, if
the "problem" is in the VM, I have got no chance.

Again, sorry to be a pain, but if it is possible (and reasonable) to
keep Win98 just ticking over, I would make use of it.

Thanks,
Steve
--
[hidden email]

Hi Günther,

> 1. code that should open a FileSave- or a FilOpenDialog

The common control was returning CDERR_STRUCTSIZE as the extended
error. Recompiling the OPENFILENAME struct to have the same byteSize as
D5 (76) fixed the problem. I think the way I would deal with this is to
create a second OPENFILENAMEPRE5 class and switch to that if I detect
Win98.

> 2. the buttons in the menu bar show no icons, however OAs
>   resource dll is included.

I am guessing resource.dll only contains 32bpp icons (ie Windows XP
icons). In the development environment, icons that are obtained from
system dlls show up fine (For example the Edit menu/Find icon displays
correctly). I think the fix for this is to use your own icons, or use
an icon editor to create 8bit icons from the XP icons. Axialis or
Microangelo should be able to do this in a matter of minutes.

Steve
--
[hidden email]