December 1995 - VISUAL PROGRAMMING


FEATURES

VISUAL PROGRAMMING IN 3-D

by Marc Najork

Many current development environments call themselves "visual," but true visual-programming languages are built around executable graphics. To examine this concept, Marc presents Cube, a 3-D visual-programming language that supports recursion, function mapping, and user-defined types.

VISUALLY CONSTRUCTING DELPHI COMPONENTS

by Al Williams

Although Delphi provides programmers with a first-class, visual application-development environment, it doesn't do much for component builders. CompBld, the form-based Delphi program Al presents here, takes up the slack, helping you create powerful new components.

EXTENDING VISUAL BASIC'S COMM CONTROL

by Michael Floyd

The communication control that comes with Visual Basic 4.0 works fine when streaming text, but doesn't support binary transfers. Michael extends this control by adding support for Xmodem protocol.

A C++ INTEGRATOR CLASS

by Darrel J. Conway

The C++ class presented here is designed to help you solve differential equations by enabling rapid incorporation of new integration methods. Darrel focuses on adaptive stepsize Runge-Kutta integrators.

EXAMINING THE WINDOWS 95 LAYERED FILE SYSTEM

by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell

One of the biggest differences between Windows 95 and its predecessors is the Windows 95 "layered" approach to file-system management. Our authors explore the file system, focusing on the "vendor supplied driver" (VSD) layer.

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

TERSE: A TINY REAL-TIME OPERATING SYSTEM

by Barry Kauler

Barry presents an 8051-implementation of TERSE, a "Tiny Embedded Real-time Software Environment" that's only about 260 bytes in size.

NETWORKED SYSTEMS

AN APPLICATION-ACCESS SECURITY MODEL

by Mark Robinson

One roadblock at the beginning of any client/server development project is how to implement access security. Mark uses PowerBuilder to present an integrated, generic, reusable model of network security.

EXAMINING ROOM

VToolsD FOR VxD DEVELOPMENT

by Charles Mirho

VToolsD, a C/C++ toolkit for writing virtual device drivers (VxDs), is designed as a replacement for Microsoft's DDK. Charles shows you how to use the toolkit to visually write VxDs.

PROGRAMMER'S WORKBENCH

VISUAL PROGRAMMING WITH REUSABLE OBJECTS

by Carol Jones and Morgan Kinne

VisualAge's object-oriented development environment is based on a construction-from-parts paradigm. Our authors use VisualAge to design and implement a timer part that runs for a certain length of time, then notifies other parts when that time has expired.

COLUMNS

PROGRAMMING PARADIGMS

by Michael Swaine

Before looking at a variety of little languages available for the Macintosh, Michael examines Michael Malone's new book The Microprocessor: A Biography.

C PROGRAMMING

by Al Stevens

Last month Al introduced his Raycaster project, a DOS raycasting game engine written in C++. This month he makes some additions to the project and ports it to Windows.

ALGORITHM ALLEY

edited by Bruce Schneier

Gene Callahan discusses how to generate sequential keys in an arbitrary radix.

PROGRAMMER'S BOOKSHELF

by Ray Duncan

Stephen Talbott's The Future Does Not Compute and Clifford Stoll's Silicon Snake Oil present contrasting views of cyberspace.

FORUM

EDITORIAL

by Jonathan Erickson

LETTERS

by you

SWAINE'S FLAMES

by Michael Swaine

PROGRAMMER'S SERVICES

OF INTEREST

by Monica E. Berg


Copyright © 1995, Dr. Dobb's Journal