Well I know a bit of both but I don't really know much about dlls so I probably wouldn't help. Anyway I just thought I'd suggest that you post this on the C/C++ forum since that's where the C++ programmers are going to look, and since this is a VB site I expect they'll know VB too.
Btw, I thought that dlls were just libraries of functions. I thought they were platform-independant so long as you could accomodate the return type or class. Well, as I said I don't know much about them :)
Dlls are not platform independant, they are like any other app, just a collection of functions, they will execute the same type of code they were compiled off of, unlike ActiveX dlls you have to define their functions of useage, in VB there is usally Integer, Long, String, Byte that can take the place of some of the parameter type, then there are some strange ones, that you can sometimes find in the API text Viewer that comes with VB6, that is, if they are one of those System Wide API types, or constants, I would also assume that the documentation least tells you some of the contents, and what any of their custom structure types look like.
Oh, thinking about it I don't think I meant platform-independant I think I meant language-independant. I'm probably still wrong though :)
I thought the functions would just take a certain number of arguments of certain types (or objects, or structs, or something) and return some kind of type/object/struct/whatever. I thought that you would be able to accomodate the return value if you knew enough about what to expect.
Anyway as I said, I don't really know much about em, and this is just what I have assumed and got stored in the back of my mind somewhere ;)
you were right to think language indepedant, it is at least usable by most major languages providing they can use similar data type, or provide structures to help with the conversion of the types. I was looking at the ICQ API downloaded from them, it is heavily intended for C++, although I think it is possible to create some kind of ActiveX control or dll in VC++ to tramit or handle the ICQ Dll, so that a program like VB can more easily use it.
Yea, it its language independant, the problem is, the readme file that came with it is directed at C++ programmers. It describes all the functions ; ie, what they expect for input and what they output. All that info is directed at C++ programmers and I can't interpret it.
How much time do you have on your hands to try to interpret it?
All the Time in the World.....I'm just doin this for kicks.
Well thats good to know, self-improvment in the programming world is always fun, maybe i'll try to throw in a helping hand on the weekend, might be able to make you a VC++ ActiveX dll, to manage the ICQ stuff.
That would be great. I'll likely be working on it this weekend, so if you want to email me and let me know what you want to do, my email address is: [email protected]
Mike