Creating a console

[Augustus Saunders <asaunders5 at earthlink dot net>]

Harold Hunt wrote:
 >That's a tricky one. I admit that it would be great to be able to 
toggle between logged
 >output and console output. However, there is an issue that stands in 
the way. The
 >problem is that we have to make a choice between the X Server being a 
Windows
 >executable or a DOS executable. DOS executables open that annoying DOS 
box
 >that doesn't do anything if you are logging to a file. Windows 
executables don't open
 >a DOS box in any circumstance, even when you want to output to the 
console.

 >
 >That gives us a dilemma because we can't have a Windows executable 
that allows
 >console output, yet we don't want a DOS executable for when we are 
logging to a file.

That's actually not quite true.  Graphics applications can create and 
attach to a console
and then use standard in and standard out, etc, just like a console 
program.  Here is the
URL for the MSDN pages for the console API:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dllproc/conchar_5ehx.asp

I've never actually worked with this API, so I can't tell you exactly 
what sequence of calls
to make to, but it looks like you pretty much just call AllocConsole and 
start printing.  You
may have to SetStdHandle with appropriate values for standard in and out 
to be wired
properly, but I'm guessing that if you just AllocConsole it will set 
decent defaults.  Then,
when you're done (or when the user wants to get rid of the console), 
just FreeConsole.  
I'm pretty sure that you don't need to use any of the low level console 
IO functions, so you
can probably ignore most of what's there.

Hope this helps.  Cheers-

Augustus