having a few problems with my debug window, which is a smaller window than my main window (which renders everything of course) and is always on top. my problem is outputting text to it. firstly, does anyone know how to set the background color to anything other than black or white during the building of the WNDCLASSEX struct? ok, now heres my real problem. i have been using TextOut to pring my debug strings to the window. only problem is they always over write each other, obviously since you have to specify the coords of where you want to position the text. I dont keep a record of where the last piece of text is printed too. is there an easy way to just append text to the end of text that is already there ? and what about scroll bars down the side of the window for when there is too much text to fit in the screen ? thanks for your help, bg3ntl

Create a brush using CreateSolidBrush() and assign that value to WNDCLASSEX.hbrBackground (you should probably call DeleteObject on this brush during shutdown, after the window class has been unregistered).

After you create the debug window, create a child window that fills the entire client area. Make that window an edit window (using the "EDIT" window class). Setup the correct window style for it (scroll bars, child, multiline, etc). The edit class will pretty much handle the rest. You can use SetWindowText() to set the text. I can''t remember if there is a way to just append... I don''t think there is, so you''ll have to buffer the content of the window yourself, and then when it needs updating, just call SetWindowText() with the buffer. That should work fine if the text doesn''t become huge. The alternative is to use the RichEdit class, which does let you stream in pieces of text, but is much more complicated. Or, I suppose you could subclass the edit window, and add your own "append text" message, and then manage the buffer yourself.. but that''s pretty similar to the first approach.

Sorry, that ended up being kinda random. I''ve done this before by adding a child edit window. The scroll bars should work automagically if you set the right styles. It just might be a little slow with alot of text.


-Brannon

Use OutputDebugString() or TRACE or ATLTRACE versions if you are in win32 environment.
To see the debug strings run dbmon.exe.
dbmon.exe is shiped with win32 SDK.

thnx for all the help guys

bg3ntl

The list box with be the easiest. An Edit box is limited to 64Kb on W9x. A rich edit control requires special helper functions and there isn''t much documentation for it.

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