Visual C++ 6.0

[Dan]

This is a two-part question... both related to MS Visual Studio 6.0.

1) I am just starting to develop a new version of a C++ program that
is for personal use only. It may get distributed as freeware if I can
shake out all the bugs and is user-friendly enough. I am on Win7 now,
but developing on XP. Is Visual C++ 6.0 good enough for this? In other
words: is there any glaring omission that mandates an upgrade to the
latest and greatest?

2) Are there any tips you can offer while coding in Visual C++ 6.0
that would save me tons of time should I decide to convert to the
newest version of C++ Visual Studio later on?

Thanks a lot for your helpful advice.

[Geoff]

On Tue, 13 Mar 2012 20:18:33 -0700 (PDT), Dan <dper...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>This is a two-part question... both related to MS Visual Studio 6.0.
>
>1) I am just starting to develop a new version of a C++ program that
>is for personal use only. It may get distributed as freeware if I can
>shake out all the bugs and is user-friendly enough. I am on Win7 now,
>but developing on XP. Is Visual C++ 6.0 good enough for this? In other
>words: is there any glaring omission that mandates an upgrade to the
>latest and greatest?

The only way I could get VS 6.0 to install on Win7/64 Pro was to
install it on the WinXP virtual machine and develop/debug there. I
have limited experience with Win7/32.

The target applications will run on all supported platforms in 32-bit
mode without trouble.

>
>2) Are there any tips you can offer while coding in Visual C++ 6.0
>that would save me tons of time should I decide to convert to the
>newest version of C++ Visual Studio later on?
>

Make sure you "play by Win7's rules" about where to put your data and
you test your app (in release mode) in regular user space and not just
as administrator prior to release as freeware.

Skip 2005 and 2008 editions of VS. My personal experience with
converting projects was somewhat painful, VS2010 was much better.

[David Webber]

"Dan" wrote in message
news:0e2b65cc-cc45-4faa...@q12g2000yqg.googlegroups.com...

> 2) Are there any tips you can offer while coding in Visual C++ 6.0
that would save me tons of time should I decide to convert to the
newest version of C++ Visual Studio later on?

1. Use strings in the format

LPCTSTR szText = _T("This is a string");

and all the routines for handling TCHAR strings. VC++6 is a bitty iffy
IIRC with unicode, but you'll want them to be wide strings when you upgrade.

2. Be vary careful with the standard template library: it changes
internally in subsequent versions and there were errors (based on implicit
assumptions about the implementation) which you could get away with in VC++6
which you can't get away with any mre.

3. Agree with other respondent - if you upgrade, go straight to VC++2010

Dave

-- David Webber
Mozart Music Software
http://www.mozart.co.uk
For discussion and support see
http://www.mozart.co.uk/mozartists/mailinglist.htm

[Farnsworth]

"Dan" <dper...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:0e2b65cc-cc45-4faa...@q12g2000yqg.googlegroups.com...

Others are more experienced in this than I am. The main thing is with ATL.
The version that came with VC6 used coding constructs that are not okay in
later versions, so you would have trouble upgrading these projects. VC6 was
created or based on ideas before C++ became a standard(1998).

The Platform SDK comes with a free 64-Bit compiler, so you can create 64-Bit
executables, but I am not sure it's supported in recent SDK's. I have seen
instructions on how to setup the VC6 IDE to use the 64-Bit compiler. You can
use it with the Express Editions, but I don't think they have much MFC
functionality.

I haven't used MFC seriously, and so I plan to use Qt instead for new
projects. It allows developing multi-platforms applications, while MFC and
WTL are Windows only. Qt is free and open source. It's licensed under
LGPL(Lesser GPL), which means that your app can be commercial and closed
source. If you want to get rid of LGPL, you can pay them around $1000 if I
remember correctly and get a different license that doesn't rely on GPL.
More info here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_%28framework%29

Another common free library is GTK+, but you don't have an option other than
Lesser GPL license.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTK%2B

[Dan]

On Mar 14, 7:29 am, "David Webber" <d...@musical-dot-demon-dot-co.uk>
wrote:

> "Dan"  wrote in message
>
> news:0e2b65cc-cc45-4faa...@q12g2000yqg.googlegroups.com...
>
> > 2) Are there any tips you can offer while coding in Visual C++ 6.0
>
> that would save me tons of time should I decide to convert to the
> newest version of C++ Visual Studio later on?
>
> 1.  Use strings in the format
>
>     LPCTSTR szText =  _T("This is a string");
>
> and all the routines for handling TCHAR strings.    VC++6 is a bitty iffy
> IIRC with unicode, but you'll want them to be wide strings when you upgrade.
>
> 2. Be vary careful with the standard template library:  it changes
> internally in subsequent versions and there were errors (based on implicit
> assumptions about the implementation) which you could get away with in VC++6
> which you can't get away with any mre.
>
> 3. Agree with other respondent - if you upgrade, go straight to VC++2010
>
> Dave
>
> -- David Webber

> Mozart Music Softwarehttp://www.mozart.co.uk

> For discussion and support seehttp://www.mozart.co.uk/mozartists/mailinglist.htm

So I guess I want to use the _UNICODE setting for CStrings?

from MSDN Visual Studio 6.0 help for CStrings:
---------------------------------------------------------------
CString is based on the TCHAR data type. If the symbol _UNICODE is
defined
for your program, TCHAR is defined as type wchar_t, a 16-bit character
type;
otherwise, it is defined as char, the normal 8-bit character type.
Under Unicode,
then, CString objects are composed of 16-bit characters. Without
Unicode, they
are composed of 8-bit char type.

When not using _UNICODE, CString is enabled for multibyte character
sets (MBCS, also known as double-byte character sets, DBCS).
---------------------------------------------------------------

And the CString class is upward-compatible?

[Dan]

On Mar 14, 1:51 pm, "Farnsworth" <nos...@nospam.com> wrote:
>
> Others are more experienced in this than I am. The main thing is with ATL.
> The version that came with VC6 used coding constructs that are not okay in
> later versions, so you would have trouble upgrading these projects. VC6 was
> created or based on ideas before C++ became a standard(1998).
>
> The Platform SDK comes with a free 64-Bit compiler, so you can create 64-Bit
> executables, but I am not sure it's supported in recent SDK's. I have seen
> instructions on how to setup the VC6 IDE to use the 64-Bit compiler. You can
> use it with the Express Editions, but I don't think they have much MFC
> functionality.
>
> I haven't used MFC seriously, and so I plan to use Qt instead for new
> projects. It allows developing multi-platforms applications, while MFC and
> WTL are Windows only. Qt is free and open source. It's licensed under
> LGPL(Lesser GPL), which means that your app can be commercial and closed
> source. If you want to get rid of LGPL, you can pay them around $1000 if I
> remember correctly and get a different license that doesn't rely on GPL.
> More info here:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_%28framework%29
>
> Another common free library is GTK+, but you don't have an option other than
> Lesser GPL license.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTK%2B

QT sounds interesting. I wonder how reliable and consistent it is? In
HTML-land,
JQuery is open-source. This I understand has been hugely successful.
IMO,
open-source Linux distros have not been all they have promised to be.
When there
are bugs, it turns out that you get what you pay for. In this respect
(among other
things such as a common application-distribution system for all
distros) Linux is
lacking.

I found QT 1.0 announcement post back in 1996 at:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.sun.announce/browse_thread/thread/6642e9ae181e1358/f507e964b5564708?q=qt+classes+c%2B%2B+group:*qt*

and the main QT home page at: http://qt.nokia.com/products

interesting....

[Dan]

List of C++ compilers (windows and other OSs)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compilers#C.2B.2B_compilers

List of compilers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compilers

[Cholo Lennon]

On 14/03/2012 20:57, Dan wrote:
> On Mar 14, 1:51 pm, "Farnsworth"<nos...@nospam.com> wrote:
>>
>> Others are more experienced in this than I am. The main thing is with ATL.
>> The version that came with VC6 used coding constructs that are not okay in
>> later versions, so you would have trouble upgrading these projects. VC6 was
>> created or based on ideas before C++ became a standard(1998).
>>
>> The Platform SDK comes with a free 64-Bit compiler, so you can create 64-Bit
>> executables, but I am not sure it's supported in recent SDK's. I have seen
>> instructions on how to setup the VC6 IDE to use the 64-Bit compiler. You can
>> use it with the Express Editions, but I don't think they have much MFC
>> functionality.
>>
>> I haven't used MFC seriously, and so I plan to use Qt instead for new
>> projects. It allows developing multi-platforms applications, while MFC and
>> WTL are Windows only. Qt is free and open source. It's licensed under
>> LGPL(Lesser GPL), which means that your app can be commercial and closed
>> source. If you want to get rid of LGPL, you can pay them around $1000 if I
>> remember correctly and get a different license that doesn't rely on GPL.
>> More info here:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_%28framework%29
>>
>> Another common free library is GTK+, but you don't have an option other than
>> Lesser GPL license.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTK%2B
>
> QT sounds interesting. I wonder how reliable and consistent it is?

...how reliable and consistent...? Well, besides the wonderful (IMHO)
KDE, a lot of high qualitiy applications were built using QT (incluiding
google earth, virtual box, stellarium, etc)

http://qt.nokia.com/qt-in-use

In
> HTML-land,
> JQuery is open-source. This I understand has been hugely successful.
> IMO,
> open-source Linux distros have not been all they have promised to be.
> When there
> are bugs, it turns out that you get what you pay for. In this respect
> (among other
> things such as a common application-distribution system for all
> distros) Linux is
> lacking.
>
> I found QT 1.0 announcement post back in 1996 at:
> http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.sun.announce/browse_thread/thread/6642e9ae181e1358/f507e964b5564708?q=qt+classes+c%2B%2B+group:*qt*
>
> and the main QT home page at: http://qt.nokia.com/products
>
> interesting....

Regards

--
Cholo Lennon
Bs.As.
ARG

[Bo Persson]

No, it's not ok.

Visual C++ 6.0 is the same generation as Windows 98. You are not using
that anymore, are you? Why not?

Have things changed since the 1990's? :-)


Try VS2010 instead, it is 5 full releases later.


Bo Persson

[ralph]

With SP6 Visual Studio 6.0 is more 'Windows 2000 generation'.

Perhaps he has legacy items he doesn't want to spend time or risk
upgrading.

Perhaps the OP doesn't have $450 in his budget right now.

-ralph

[Geoff]

On Thu, 15 Mar 2012 19:17:05 -0500, ralph <nt_cons...@yahoo.net>
wrote:

That, and the free VS2010 Express Edition doesn't support MFC and this
is an MFC discussion group.

He originally stated his program was for his own use which makes
spending a lot on VS2010 prohibitive until his proof of concept might
earn something on the open market.

[Bo Persson]

But he said : "I am just starting to develop a new version of a C++
program".

That's an excellent opportunity for moving to a compiler that is more
like real C++ and also supports the OS version he is using.

>
> Perhaps the OP doesn't have $450 in his budget right now.
>

He has been saving on upgrades for the last 10 years. I think it is
time to spend that now.

"Is Visual C++ 6.0 good enough" - No.


Bo Persson

[Farnsworth]

It's kind of hard to answer your questions without knowing more about you.
You could be a beginner or an experienced developer, but we can't tell much
from your original post. To get a better advice, please answer these
questions:

Can you tell us what experience you have in programming?

Do you consider yourself familiar with MFC?

Do you have a lot of MFC code? If so, converting it to another GUI toolkit
would be difficult, and you would have to stay with MFC, at least for these
programs.

What type of applications do you plan to develop? Database? Graphics? Games?
With DirectX or not. More details help.

[Dan]

Your about right on the money. I wish I was the same... if I was, I
would be opting for VS 2010 Professional for C++. See VS 2010 product
comparison list: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hs24szh9.aspx
for details. But they did lower the price to $499 though:
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010-editions/professional/overview
...perhaps because VS 2011 or 2012 is coming out soon.
So Visual Studio 6.0 is good enough For Now.... upgrading when I get
more $, some time in the future.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Mar 17, 9:38 am, "Farnsworth" <nos...@nospam.com> wrote:
>
> It's kind of hard to answer your questions without knowing more about you.
> You could be a beginner or an experienced developer, but we can't tell much
> from your original post. To get a better advice, please answer these
> questions:
>
> Can you tell us what experience you have in programming?
>
> Do you consider yourself familiar with MFC?
>
> Do you have a lot of MFC code? If so, converting it to another GUI toolkit
> would be difficult, and you would have to stay with MFC, at least for these
> programs.
>
> What type of applications do you plan to develop? Database? Graphics? Games?
> With DirectX or not. More details help.

Sure... I did some professional C programming like 100 years ago, but
then switched to SAP ABAP, and worked with that for about 15years.
When working with SAP ABAP, I would dabble in C/C++ just to keep up on
my skills. I am now retired, but would still like to 'create stuff' at
home.

I'm not that familiar with MFC, but I like it because it's closed-
code. I downloaded Eclipse and the GCC compiler for Win32. It's a nice
package-set...

From what I understand, the GPL license presents a problem - for now.
I have a hesitation with giving the world access to my code- for them
to potentially copy, slightly change, and then sell (for a donation)
themselves.

The other non-Microsoft option... giving $1000 to QT to keep my code
closed .... well... I would rather stick with MS Visual Studio
instead. That's just my personal preference.

The application programs I would like to develop are: A couple of
utility programs.... using the CSplitterWnd, CFormView classes,
dialogs....etc.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
www.danpsblog.com

[ralph]

On Thu, 5 Apr 2012 20:56:28 -0700 (PDT), Dan <dper...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>

>From what I understand, the GPL license presents a problem - for now.
>I have a hesitation with giving the world access to my code- for them
>to potentially copy, slightly change, and then sell (for a donation)
>themselves.
>

The GPL is a virus that eventually taints everything it touches. <g>

But if you are only using it for your private amusment - who's to
know? The purest will point out that you are still breaking the law,
but again if a tree falls and no one's around to hear it - who cares?

Myself, I avoid GPL and its kin religiously. That is mostly because
I'm only semi-retired and a lot of what I write ends up on a client's
site sooner or later. I'd rather avoid any embarressment - for me or
for my clients.

Visual Studio 6 is still a viable development platform for many
applications. In fact there are still a ton of shops out there happily
using VB6 with satisfactory results.

When it is time for YOU to migrate you'll know it because you'll have
found a good reason for YOU to do so. <g>

-ralph

[Dan]

On Apr 6, 12:39 am, ralph <nt_consultin...@yahoo.net> wrote:
......

>
> The GPL is a virus that eventually taints everything it touches. <g>
>
> But if you are only using it for your private amusment - who's to
> know? The purest will point out that you are still breaking the law,
> but again if a tree falls and no one's around to hear it - who cares?
>

......
>
> -ralph

I fired up Eclipse yesterday to try a sample Template program. Eclipse
displayed a dialog and asked me if it can send my project activity to
them, and added that it is part of the agreement that I agreed to when
installing it. I just hope that Eclipse took only the small code
sample test projects I used Eclipse for, and not my entire CPP project
directory.... (it probably did the right thing).
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OTOH, I found some great Unix-style greps for Windows in the: drive:\D:
\Eclipse\msys\1.0\bin directory.
--which may mean that it came from the MinGW package ... not
sure.

For those who don't know, grep is a(n old but very useful) program
that finds strings in files. An example:

grep -iFe 'cpp' -w --directories=recurse --color=auto -exclude=*.j* d:
\nts\dirtosearch
where:
-i - ignore case distinctions
-F - use this. grep is for everything, fgrep is for text finds. they
want you to use grep -F these days, as an equivalent.
-e - search using a regular expression / use PATTERN for matching
-'cpp' - the arg to search for
-w - look for whole words / force PATTERN to match only whole words
--directories=recurse - recursive search
--color=auto - automatically color the search strings found in the
results
-exclude=*.j* - exclude certain files by pattern. Here, exclude
all .jpeg, .jpg files.
d:\nts\dirtosearch - the drive and directory to recursively search
through

help syntax: grep --help

...just be careful, as some options have one dash preceding them, and
some have two.

[Farnsworth]

"Dan" <dper...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:16f33aaf-e706-4ba3...@f27g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...

> The other non-Microsoft option... giving $1000 to QT to keep my
> code closed .... well... I would rather stick with MS Visual
> Studio instead. That's just my personal preference.

You don't have to spend anything on Qt to keep your code closed. Here are
the rules simplified:

- GPL: Must open source your code.
- LGPL("L" could stand for either "Lesser" or "Library"): No need to open
source your code. Selling your product that uses it is fine.

Personally I avoid GPL like the plague, just to be free to put my code in
any commercial project.