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Microsoft Windows from Wikipedia ↩︎

Windows,
a series of 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems by Microsoft for x86 and x86-64 PC's, as well as Windows CE for embedded systems and the mobile operating system Windows Mobile. Its development started in the early 80s as a graphical user interface for 16-bit MS-DOS operating system, with the ability to perform cooperative multitasking while processing an event loop.

Contents

Versions
Chess Engines
Windows Chess GUIs
Applications
Development
See also
Publications
Forum Posts
1. 1995 ...
2. 2000 ...
3. 2010 ...
4. 2015 ...
Further Links
References

Versions


Windows 1.0, 1985 ¹	Windows/286 2.11, 1987 ²
	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_10
Windows NT 4.0 ³	Windows 10 Task View ⁴

Microsoft Windows 1.03 and other tools, 1985 from DigiBarn ↩︎
Microsoft Windows/286 2.11 and other tools from DigiBarn ↩︎
Windows NT 4.0 Workstation Betriebssystem ↩︎
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Task_View Task View from Wikipedia↩︎

Chess Engines

Most current chess engines are suited to run under Windows, a few with its own proprietary user interface, but most common as console application and child process of an external chess GUI communicating via redirected standard streams ¹ using protocols like the Chess Engine Communication Protocol (WinBoard) and/or the Universal Chess Interface (UCI).

Windows Chess GUIs


Arena ¹	Deep Sjeng under ChessPartner ²

Deep Fritz 14 GUI ³	Deep Rybka 4 Aquarium ⁴

Applications

Major

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Excel

Microsoft PowerPoint

Accessories

Entertainment

Microsoft Entertainment Pack

Taipei by David Norris

Ziggurat by David Norris

Remote Desktop

Remote Desktop Protocol

Remote Desktop Services, MSDN

Development

Covers integrated development environments (IDE), Software development kit (SDK), Application programming interface (API), programming languages, compiler and tools.

IDE

Microsoft Visual Studio from Wikipedia

Visual Studio 2010, MSDN

Eclipse from Wikipedia

Eclipse.org home

Frameworks

Common Language Runtime Overview, MSDN

Windows Communication Foundation from Wikipedia

Subsystems

SDK

API

Input and Output

Memory

Memory Management, MSDN
Enumerating a Heap, MSDN
Allocating Memory from a NUMA Node, MSDN » NUMA
[https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa363804(v=vs.85).aspx NUMA Support (Windows), MSDN]
Windows Memory Management - CodeProject
Memory Limits for Applications on Windows by Steve Lionel (Intel), May 16, 2011

Interprocess Communications

Dynamic Linking

Dynamic-link library from Wikipedia

Dynamic-Link Libraries, MSDN

DLL hell from Wikipedia

The End of DLL Hell, MSDN

C

C programmers were faced with some new paradigms from early 16-bit Windows API, not to mention the fact that a lot of C standard library functions were hard and error-prone to use, or even taboo ² . Charles Petzold: "The original hello world program in the Windows 1.0 SDK was a bit of a scandal. HELLO.C was about 150 lines long, and the HELLO.RC resource script had another 20 or so more lines". (...) Veteran C programmers often curled up in horror or laughter when encountering the Windows hello-world program." ³ .

WinMain and the Message loop

Windows programs are event-driven, have no usual main, but WinMain to enter a event loop ⁴ , where DispatchMessage transfers messages to a callback procedure associated with the window the message refers to, i.e. for keyboard events one window which owns the keyboard focus. To make Windows applications work flawlessly, keeping its windows up to date, that is processing paint messages, the I/O bound GUI thread needs to be run in the message loop, to react on messages best within 20 ms. In early 16-bit Windows, DispatchMessage implemented cooperative multitasking - but one application being uncooperative could made the whole system hang.

int APIENTRY WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance, LPSTR lpCmdLine, int nCmdShow)
{
   WNDCLASS wc;
   MSG msg;
   ...
   wc.lpfnWndProc = (WNDPROC) MyWndProc; // associate a Window procedure for this "class" of windows
   if (!RegisterClass(&wc)) // register window class
       return FALSE;
   hwnd = CreateWindow(...);
   ShowWindow(hwnd, SW_SHOW);
   while(GetMessage(&msg, NULL, 0, 0) > 0)
   {
     TranslateMessage(&msg);
     DispatchMessage(&msg);
   }
   return msg.wParam;
}

Window Procedure

The callback or Window procedure is called from the above message loop.

LRESULT CALLBACK MyWndProc(
    HWND hwnd,        // handle to window
    UINT uMsg,        // message identifier
    WPARAM wParam,    // first message parameter
    LPARAM lParam)    // second message parameter
{
    PAINTSTRUCT ps;
    HDC hdc;
    switch (uMsg)
    {
        case WM_CREATE:    // Initialize the window
            return 0;
        case WM_PAINT:
            hdc = BeginPaint(hwnd, &ps);
            TextOut(hdc, 0, 0, "Hello, Windows!", 15);
            EndPaint(hwnd, &ps);
            return 0;
        case WM_DESTROY:   // Clean up window-specific data objects
            return 0;
        case WM_CHAR:      // Process Keyboard character events
            return 0;
        case WM_MOUSEMOVE: // Process mouse move events
            return 0;
        // Process other messages
        default:
            return DefWindowProc(hwnd, uMsg, wParam, lParam);
    }
    return 0;
}

Standard C Library

C++

Microsoft's proprietary C++ Foundation Classes wrapped the handle based Windows API and hides much of its complexity. Still one of the early class libs, it has a lot of ugly macros, i.e. for message maps. Borland's counter part was the Object Windows Library.

Command-Line Applications

Applies for most UCI and/or Chess Engine Communication Protocol (WinBoard) compatible chess engines, relying on an external GUI.

Creating Command-Line Applications (C++), MSDN
Managed Extensions for C++ from Wikipedia now deprecated

Class Libs

MFC Reference, MSDN

Compiler

Visual C++ from Wikipedia

Visual C++ Tutorials, Library, and More on MSDN

MinGW from Wikipedia, port of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC)

MinGW - Minimalist GNU for Windows

Cygwin from Wikipedia, Unix-like environment and command-line interface

Cygwin Information and Installation

Intel C++ Compiler from Wikipedia

Intel® Compilers

Intel(R) C++ Compiler User and Reference Guides covers Intrinsics » x86, x86-64, MMX, SSE2, SSSE3, SSE4, AVX

Calling Conventions

Agner Fog describes x86 and x86-64 calling conventions for different C++ compilers and operating systems, covering 32-bit and 64-bit Windows ⁵ :

The document contains details about data representation, function calling conventions, register usage conventions, name mangling schemes, etc. for many different C++ compilers and operating systems. Discusses compatibilities and incompatibilities between different C++ compilers. Includes information that is not covered by the official Application Binary Interface standards (ABI's). The information provided here is based on my own research and therefore descriptive rather than normative. Intended as a source of reference for programmers who want to make function libraries compatible with multiple compilers or operating systems and for makers of compilers and other development tools who want their tools to be compatible with existing tools.

Other Languages

Publications

Pavel Yosifovich, Mark Russinovich, David Solomon, Alex Ionescu (2017). Microsoft Windows Internals. 7th Edition

Forum Posts

Further Links

Microsoft Windows from Wikipedia
Wintel from Wikipedia » Intel
Wine (software) from Wikipedia
Engineering Windows 7 - Windows Desktop Search by Chris McConnell, October 13, 2008

References

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