When are MS going to fix their API help?

[Michael C]

MS API help is still geared towards C programmers only despite that fact
that programmers from other languages have been using them for 10+ years
now. When looking up an API it can be a real pain to find the dll that the
API is in and the value of the constants. With the common API like
ShowWindow it's very easy to work out but with more obscure API, like say
those for win CE, it can be a real pain requiring downloading and installing
SDKs. I guess showing the syntax for vb6/C# and other languages would be a
bit over the top but at least specifying the name of the dll and the value
of the constants would be good. Sound fair?

[Michael C#]

I doubt converting the API docs is high on their priority list - they're
busy herding programmers to .NET - in the opposite direction from WIN32 API
programming. I ended up getting a book for Win32 Programming in VB from the
discount rack at the bookstore. It was specifically geared to VB6, but was
easier to translate over to VB.NET than all those god-awful C++ .h files.

"Michael C" <mc*****@NOSPAMoptushome.com.au> wrote in message
news:uD**************@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...

MS API help is still geared towards C programmers only despite that fact
that programmers from other languages have been using them for 10+ years
now. When looking up an API it can be a real pain to find the dll that the
API is in and the value of the constants. With the common API like
ShowWindow it's very easy to work out but with more obscure API, like say
those for win CE, it can be a real pain requiring downloading and
installing SDKs. I guess showing the syntax for vb6/C# and other languages
would be a bit over the top but at least specifying the name of the dll
and the value of the constants would be good. Sound fair?

[Michael C]

"Michael C#" <xy*@abcdef.com> wrote in message
news:DK******************@fe08.lga...

I doubt converting the API docs is high on their priority list - they're
busy herding programmers to .NET - in the opposite direction from WIN32 API
programming. I ended up getting a book for Win32 Programming in VB from
the discount rack at the bookstore. It was specifically geared to VB6, but
was easier to translate over to VB.NET than all those god-awful C++ .h
files.

It might be good if they put the functionality into .net so we didn't need
APIs any longer :-) I have got one of those books but they tend to cover the
less obscure areas of API.

Michael

[Michael C#]

"Michael C" <mc*****@NOSPAMoptushome.com.au> wrote in message
news:uy**************@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...

It might be good if they put the functionality into .net so we didn't need
APIs any longer :-) I have got one of those books but they tend to cover
the less obscure areas of API.

Yeah tell me about it :) I spent mad hours trying to make sense of some of
the newer APIs that aren't even covered in the older books - like the
Windows Term Svcs API... Still having nightmares about that project :) And
the documentation on MSDN makes no sense unless you spend hours ripping
through the C header files to figure out the actual values of the constants
they reference.