MFC provides a rather neat way of updating the state of window elements in an MFC CWnd (or derived) object during application idle-time. Typically, this is done by setting the element ID and member function in the ON_UPDATE_COMMAND_UI macro, and then declaring the function in the class header file: afx_msg void OnUpdateMyCommand(CCmdUI* pCmdUI); Then you implement the handler as follows: void CMyClass::OnUpdateMyCommand... pCmdUI) { if(IsMyCommandAvailable()) pCmdUI->Enable(TRUE); } This...

spy.doc Home Page spy.doc Download Page - spy.doc is released under a Freeware license spy.doc documents XML-schemas using the Altova® XMLSpy® XML-schema documentation format to produce Microsoft® HTML Help documentation (.chm) files that feature auto-generated Table-of-contents, Index, and full-text search. By providing suitably coded plugins, the documentation output can be greatly extended and enhanced. Features Windows, Console and Launcher applications. Uses an XML-base project file (extension...

The .NET 2.0 System.Configuration.dll provides a much more sophisticated (and complex) set of classes that access and modify application .config files, than compared to the functionality in .NET 1.x. However, most often, the requirement is still to provide simple access to and from the key-value pairs in the appSettings section as before. This post establishes a very simple abstract base-class that provides a simple binding to the appSettings section that requires no code to be written in the sub-class....

As an ongoing part of maintaining our CodeXS code-generation tool (read about it here: CodeXS article), we are continually looking for ways to improve the consistency, reliability and performance of the CodeXS tool. Enter the System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchemaSet class. Unfortunately, it is available only in .NET 2.0+. Unlike the .NET 1.x XmlSchemas class, this class provides what seems to be a one-shop-stop means of reading, compiling and using a target-schema that utilizes a complex multi-namespace, multi-include/import...

If you write applications in .NET that generate .NET language source-code as output, and the output language should be selectable (typically C# or VB.NET), then you will probably end up generating the output from a System.CodeDom graph. Once you have the CodeDOM the actual code generation support in .NET is easy, clean and produces reasonable code. So what's the catch? Well, consider at least the following: Building CodeDOMs programmatically is a real pain - the .NET API's are convoluted, difficult...

CodeXS Version 0.57b was released on 13 July 2006. You can download the source-code by re/registering here: Download source-code You can check the latest update information here: Features and updates You can run the CodeXS online tool here: CodeXS online Version 0.57ß - 13 Jul 2006 Currently still provides complete support for VS2005/.NET 2.0, and VS2003/.NET 1.1. Collection class bug-fixes The following bugs-fixes are implemented: Names for schema complex types an elements with multiple occurrences...

CodeXS Version 0.56b was released on 19 June 2006. You can download the source-code by re/registering here: Download source-code You can check the latest update information here: Features and updates You can run the CodeXS online tool here: CodeXS online Changes in Version 0.56ß - 19 Jun 2006 Currently still provides complete support for VS2005/.NET 2.0, and VS2003/.NET 1.1. Updated collection object generated code Updated the collection object generated code: Re-implemented the FromArray method...

A while ago I posted this post on my blog: Reading RSS 2.0 feeds using the .NET XmlSerializer class Since that post, our CodeXS code-generator tool has been updated. With the latest update of the tool due out this week, the code-generator correctly generates the de-/-serialization code to read and write RSS 2.0 feeds. It is now fairly simple to also create RSS feeds, as feed item objects can be easily created and added to the items collection, instead of trying to manipulate arrays. A simple example...

Maybe this is the external tool that MS forgot to build into VS...? I often find that I need to open a File Explorer window in the folder that contains the file highlighted in the VS Solution Explorer. Manual navigation can be frustrating, and time-consuming. The easy solution is to define an external tool in the VS IDE as follows: Click the Tools/External Tools... menu item. In the External Tools Dialog, click the Add button. In the Title text box add: Explorer, In the Command text box add: explorer.exe,...

Article, add-in installer and source-code at Code Project Article, add-in installer and latest source-code at Businessware x.doc is a Visual Studio (VS) 2005 add-in that provides a means to manage and visualize source-code comment documentation interactively in the IDE. A screen-shot is shown below: Features x.doc provides two windows: The Visualizer window which is the window that provides the rendered XML documentation text using a defined set of XSL templates and a CSS. This window is interactively...