User coding on NT w2k

Philip Jones

Hi

There has been a bit of activity on this forum regarding user coding and some people have mentioned NT so I thought it best to reiterate the situation.

When using user coding under NT, you cannot add your own common blocks or subroutines to the coding.

Why ...

User coding under NT is achieved by recompiling and linking a dll. This dll is then used by the supplied star.exe when it runs.

The dll shares data and functions with star itself, these are called exports. The exports of a dll can be adressed by number (ordinal) or name (decorated with funny characters). The method used by star is ordinal which means that what star does is call (say) the 23rd function when it wants to call posdat. If your coding changes the exports of the dll then it is likely that you will upset the numbering in the dll so when star calls the 23rd function it gets the new 23rd which could be radpro and not posdat.

You change the exports by adding either common blocks or subroutines/functions to the user coding.

There is a tool called pexports http://www.is.lg.ua/ftp/gnuwin32/alt...ports-0.43.zip that can help you look at exports to understand what is happening.

If you are hell bent on doing this sort of thing I have few ideas that may help, so get in touch, but in general I would not advise it if what I have said in this post does not make complete sense to you.