If I understood correctly, FreeBASIC is able to compile DLLs right? My needs are pretty specific. I want to create a shell context menu extension that will send a list of files and folders to an application. I want to get away from SendTo because of the path length limitation. The main app is written in AutoIt, so I need a way to retrieve the data as well. I think if the DLL can send the WM_DROPFILES message (or a custom message) to my app with the pointer to the structure, that will work just fine. And if the app is not running, it would need to start it first, then send the message (or pass the pointer as a string on the commandline, possible?).
Is FreeBASIC able to do something like this? Is it way harder than it sounds? Any suggestions would be great. I've never used FreeBASIC before, so I'm going to spend today trying to learn a little.
Why not just incorporate your needs into the autoit script?
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AutoIt cannot compile DLLs, and cannot be integrated into explorer's shell to do what I want. A shell extension is the only way to do this (that I know of).
A simple shell context menu entry does not work like a shell extension. For example, if you select Open for 5 text files, then the shell actually runs notepad (or your editor) 5 times, once with each file as a single commandline paramater. A shell extension can be coded to do whatever you want. It acts as though the whole group of files / folders has been drag-and-dropped on it in one operation.
So what exactly does (will) your program do?
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Well really it's just for my personal use in random crap I write for my laptop, but the original idea was to add shell support for EDT so in addition to dropping files, you can select a bunch of stuff in explorer and wipe it through EDT (acts just like a drag-and-drop operation).
sorry for taking so long but yes freebasic can compile dll files, a good place to learn from examples is at http://freebasic.net/forum/
your friendly neighbourhood moderator Zach Thibeau
Yep, been there, working through the tutorials and such now to get my feet wet. But I did a quick search on the forum about shell extensions and pretty much came up empty. And idea where I can learn to make one of them? I'm hoping I don't have to try and translate something from an MSVC example or something. I don't feel like trying to wrap my head around C++ at the moment
My suggestion is use fbedit, it uses syntax highlighting for FreeBASIC and best of all it will allow you to compile a dll file or a windows gui by using the compiler settings http://www.freebasic.net/index.php/details?page=download&category=tool&id=5
your friendly neighbourhood moderator Zach Thibeau