Technical Manual

onsdag den 18. maj 2022 kl. 23.05.33 UTC+2 skrev Ricky:

windows or linux?

Windows

if you can execute a system command like "start filename.html" it should open filename.html in the default browser (or bring bring up the chose application menu)

Is "start" an actual command? I think I understand what you mean. Like the file was double clicked in Windows, it would be opened by the default browser... even Microsoft Edge. I'll ask in the Forth group how to run a file. Thanks

Before I retired (10+ years ago) I was testing some HTTP client s/w by using, IIRC, Microsoft IIS to serve up HTML to it using a freebie interceptor the name of which I have not yet remembered. It was an ordinary dictionary word, I think, not invented or acronym...

It is, but I think it is a built-in of CMD.EXE. Powershell may have a different version.

It looks up the default double-click action in the registry for that file type. You can give it options to simulate other actions, like "do whatever is configured for right-click Edit".

There is also a C API that does the same thing for you.

However, because of default security settings of some browsers, starting a file.html won't necessarily load or run the associated Javascript files. This depends on the browser and operating system. Test it, but if you have a problem you might need to incorporate a tiny HTTP server.

Clifford Heath

Yes, I looked it up and START does exactly what I want. I can run that using CMD which I'm pretty sure I can invoke from my program. I just need to make sure I don't create any infinite loops with that in it! lol I'd hate to have my computer crash from an infinite number of new command line programs running. lol

Thanks.

I believe there's an API that does the same thing without having to make a new process or execute CMD, but I'd have to go searching some old code for an example.

Clifford Heath

As soon as you say API, I assume you are talking about something in C. I'm not using C, so running a command through a Windows call is fine. In fact, I have example code for that, which is excellent. I need to get something going quickly, only a couple of weeks or so to make it useful, then I can guild the lily further.

Surely your Forth can load a DLL and call any function inside it, especially if it only take a single string as an parameter? That's pretty basic stuff I would expect from any scripting language...

CH.

There are a number of functions to create processes or threads and manage them.

At one time you could use the IE COM interface to control it. I haven't used Forth in years but it was fairly easy in Pytnon. Chrome can be automated with the new WebDriver but it's more complex.

Ok, what would be an example of that? Do you know of any code that does that? I don't.

Forth does many, many things. I am limited to using the things I know of and know how to use. The basic language is a basic language. It is up to the designer of the Forth implementation to provide the various bells and whistles.

Do you have documentation for the API you are talking about? I have no problem with using a CMD approach. None, in fact, it can be very advantageous to separate the testing, the generation of the HTML and the display of the HTML.

That's my thinking anyway. If you have more information, I'm happy to listen.

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application\msedge.exe" "C:\Program Files\PCHealthCheck\ux\resources\de\license.html"

Danke,

This was the API I was thinking of:

It's defined in shell32.dll. I would expect that most scripting languages could be told to open that DLL, find that named entry point, and construct a function call frame using the required parameters (two integers, four C strings). This kind of dynamic loading and function call is pretty basic stuff. Sometimes it's implemented using an "FFI" layer - see if your Forth supports FFI. There are "interesting" APIs that are hard to support using FFI, but this one is very simple.

Another way would be if you can add a small C extension to define a ShellExecute word for your Forth.

Clifford Heath.

That uses Edge, not the users default browser. You need to use ShellExecute to get the default browser.

CH

yeah, in windows it's something like

system('start filename.htm');

in linux

system('xdg-open filename.html')

In MS-Windows. If I associate a .txt file with a particular editor, the editor is opened with this file if I state the name of the text file on the command prompt. I would expect the same happens if you associate a .html file with a browser.

(A unix shell could do the same, if a html is marked executable, they could start the preferred mime association. There is no such shell as far as I know.)

Caveat, the last MS-Windows I use is Windows XP. Maybe it has changed in the meantime.

Check out ciforth. It runs any subroutine on any dll that is present on your machine.

can inspect the example of midi events. (openmidi sendmidi closemidi). If you are not happy with ciforth, you can even copy the source implementation for win32forth. Read the sections DLL and DLL-calls-internal in Documentation on this level about dll's is hard to come by, however. There are datastructures defined in C, that must be passed around.

Groetjes Albert

Thanks for the reply. I've decided it is not so important to link the debug instructions with the test program. The debug process for anything in the audio paths is pretty much the same, so one large HTML file with lots of images of schematic and PWB layouts showing where to probe.

I still have the rest of the board (purely digital) to do, so that is next. Two files that cover pretty much anything that goes wrong.

Thanks for the advice.