Your own SDK for your creative off-the-shelf apps using clsMemoryMap
With clsMemoryMap (Class Module employing RtlMoveMemory et al) you can SHARE memory between your application and others.
It is therefore, a darned neat way to provide interactive communications between your retail application and Add-Ons that can be developed by 3rd parties for YOUR package!
Of course, this is nothing new (I have no idea who knocked out the original and clever Class Module - tidied up a wee bit by me) but what I am showing you all here, is a simple method to provide a "Software Development Kit" for your cool applications that can be remotely controlled in a fashion similar to DDE.
Sans the issues you may otherwise encounter with DDE, of course.
This submission comprises two very simple VB6 programs.
The FIRST VB6 App is called "WidgetView" a useless thing that has a simple list of 5 names.
WidgetView has a timer called MySDK that examines a SHARED MEMORY (vb6Request) and updates a Label. When the label changes, it invokes a request from the listbox and submits the data back to the AddOn program, just by "poking" the result into a SHARED MEMORY (vb6Result).
The SECOND VB6 App is called "MyAddOn". It does very little. The user picks a number between 1 and 5, and sets the SHARED MEMORY (VB6Request) with that value, and uses a similar timer called MySDK, to examine changes to the Vb6Result memory variable.
It is, as I say, rudimentary, but as you make up your own rules and control them with CASE/SELECT statements, you can build up a pretty groovy SDK for your App in next to no time!
Enjoy,
Kevin Ritch
V8Software.com
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