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    The Old New Thing

    January 2015 | The Old New Thing

    Got errands? Now is the time
    Got errands? Now is the time
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenJanuary 30, 2015Jan 30, 201501/30/15
    This upcoming Sunday is the Super Bowl, the championship game for a sport played only in the United States.¹ The entire country stops doing anything when the game is on. This makes it a perfect time to get out and run your errands, because the streets will be completely empty. Check out this traffic map at the kickoff of the 2014 Super ...

    Comments are closed.0Non-Computer
    Creating a shared memory block that can grow in size
    Creating a shared memory block that can grow in size
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenJanuary 30, 2015Jan 30, 201501/30/15
    A little-known feature of shared memory blocks in Win32 is that it is possible to resize them, sort of. When you create a shared memory block, you can pass the SEC_RESERVE flag to Create­File­Mapping, then the size you pass to the function is treated as a maximum rather than an exact size. (Don't forget that Create­File­...

    Comments are closed.0Code
    Color-aware ClearType requires access to fixed background pixels, which is a problem if you don't know what the background pixels are, or if they aren't fixed
    Color-aware ClearType requires access to fixed background pixels, which is a problem if you don't know what the background pixels are, or if they aren't fixed
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenJanuary 29, 2015Jan 29, 201501/29/15
    ClearType is a technology that blends text pixels with background pixels with the goal of reducing visual artifacts during text rendering.¹ If you go for the full-meal version of ClearType, it uses knowledge about the physical properties of LCD screens in order to carry out its work. Some time ago, I noted one catch with this model, which...

    Comments are closed.0Code
    The compiler can make up its own calling conventions, within limits
    The compiler can make up its own calling conventions, within limits
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenJanuary 28, 2015Jan 28, 201501/28/15
    A customer was confused by what they were seeing when debugging. It is our understanding that the Windows x86-64 calling convention passes the first four parameters in registers rcx, rdx, r8, and r9. But we're seeing the parameters being passed some other way. Given the function prototype we would expect to see the parameters passed as rcx...

    Comments are closed.0Code
    Tip for trying to boost morale: Don't brag about your overseas trips
    Tip for trying to boost morale: Don't brag about your overseas trips
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenJanuary 27, 2015Jan 27, 201501/27/15
    Once upon a time, a senior manager held a team meeting to address low team morale. Attempting to highlight how important the project was, he opened by saying, "I just got back from ⟨faraway country⟩, meeting with some of our important clients, and..." This remark had exactly the opposite effect from what the manager intended. ...

    Comments are closed.0Other
    Customizing item enumeration with IShellItem
    Customizing item enumeration with IShellItem
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenJanuary 26, 2015Jan 26, 201501/26/15
    If you are using the original IShell­Folder interface, then you can use SHCONTF values to customize how child items are enumerated. But what if you're using IShell­Item? Let's take it one step at a time. First, the basic program. (Remember, Little Programs do little to no error checking.) Run this program with the fully-qualified ...

    Comments are closed.0Code
    Helper functions to make shell bind contexts slightly more manageable
    Helper functions to make shell bind contexts slightly more manageable
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenJanuary 23, 2015Jan 23, 201501/23/15
    Last time, we learned about the wonderful world of shell bind context strings, and I promised some helper functions to make this slightly more manageable. Here are some helper functions which supplement the Create­Bind­Ctx­With­Opts function we created some time ago. The Ensure­Bind­Ctx­Property­Bag function ...

    Comments are closed.0Code
    The wonderful world of shell bind context strings
    The wonderful world of shell bind context strings
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenJanuary 22, 2015Jan 22, 201501/22/15
    Some time ago, we saw how the IBindCtx parameter to IShell­Folder::Parse­Display­Name can be used to modify how the parse takes place. More generally, the IBindCtx parameter to a function is a catch-all miscellaneous options parameter. The interesting part of the bind context is all the stuff that has been added to it via the ...

    Comments are closed.0Code
    Why does my synchronous overlapped ReadFile return FALSE when the end of the file is reached?
    Why does my synchronous overlapped ReadFile return FALSE when the end of the file is reached?
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenJanuary 21, 2015Jan 21, 201501/21/15
    A customer reported that the behavior of Read­File was not what they were expecting. We have a synchronous file handle (not created with FILE_FLAG_OVERLAPPED), but we issue reads against it with an OVERLAPPED structure. We find that when we read past the end of the file, the Read­File returns FALSE even though the documentation says ...

    Comments are closed.0Code
    Why does the copy dialog give me the incorrect total size of the files being copied?
    Why does the copy dialog give me the incorrect total size of the files being copied?
    Raymond ChenRaymond ChenJanuary 20, 2015Jan 20, 201501/20/15
    If you try to copy a bunch of files to a drive that doesn't have enough available space, you get an error message like this: "But wait," you say. "I'm only copying 5GB of data. Why does it say Total size: 14.9 GB?" This is a case of information being presented out of context and resulting in mass confusion. Suppose you saw the...

    Comments are closed.0Tips/Support
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