Does winim only cover a part of the winapi?

[KnorrFG]

Hey, I have to admit, I'm not super familiar with winapi programming. But I was thinking about writing a window manager for windows, and wanted to check how complicated that would be E.g. when looking into how to transfer windows between virtual desktops, I found this: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/shobjidl_core/nf-shobjidl_core-ivirtualdesktopmanager-movewindowtodesktop. However, I cannot find those functions in winim. Did I miss them? Or are they actually missing?

[khchen]

No header/library can cover all Windows API. I added SDK header one by one into winim if I think it useful for me or for most people.

[KnorrFG]

I see. Are there instructions somewhere on how to add them? If it's doable for me, and not requiring tons of winapi expertise, I'd try to add it myself.

[khchen]

Adding one API is easy, adding a whole header file is hard. You can look at https://github.com/byt3bl33d3r/OffensiveNim/blob/master/src/pop_bin.nim as an example to add one API.

[KnorrFG]

I see. Thanks for the info. It seems that header isn't even part of mingw64, and its neccessary to use vcc. But since its a windows project anyway that's no problem.

[theAkito]

@KnorrFG Does that mean you will implement the things you would've needed for your project?

[KnorrFG]

I will try at least ^^

[KnorrFG]

Sorry for reopening, but to me, this seemed more appropriate than opening a new issue. I tried to write a wrapper for the API, but I've hit a wall. When I try to run the following program, it will always throw a sigsegv on the second to last line (the one that acctually calls IsWindowOnCurrentVirtualDesktop). Do you have an Idea why?

import winim

let 
    CLSID_VirtualDesktopManager* = DEFINE_GUID("aa509086-5ca9-4c25-8f95-589d3c07b48a")
    IID_VirtualDesktopManager* = DEFINE_GUID("a5cd92ff-29be-454c-8d04-d82879fb3f1b")
type 
  IVirtualDesktopManager* {.pure.} = object
    lpVtbl*: ptr IVirtualDesktopManagerVtbl
  IVirtualDesktopManagerVtbl* {.pure, inheritable.} = object of IDispatchVtbl
    MoveWindowToDesktop*: proc (self: ptr IVirtualDesktopManager, topLevelWindow: HWND, desktopId: REFGUID ): HRESULT {.stdcall.}
    IsWindowOnCurrentVirtualDesktop*: proc (self: ptr IVirtualDesktopManager, topLevelWindow: HWND , onCurrentDesktop: ptr bool): HRESULT {.stdcall.}
    GetWindowDesktopId*: proc (self: ptr IVirtualDesktopManager, topLevelWindow: HWND , desktopId: ptr GUID): HRESULT {.stdcall.}

var vdmngr: ptr IVirtualDesktopManager
CoInitialize(nil)

if CoCreateInstance(&CLSID_VirtualDesktopManager, nil, CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER, 
                 &IID_VirtualDesktopManager, cast[ptr PVOID](&vdmngr)).FAILED: raise
#defer: vdmngr.Release()

let win = GetActiveWindow()
var onDesktop = false
if vdmngr.isNil:
    echo "ptr is nil"
if vdmngr.lpVtbl.isNil:
    echo "vtable is nil"
if onDesktop.addr.isNil:
    echo "on desktop is nil"
echo vdmngr.lpVtbl.IsWindowOnCurrentVirtualDesktop(vdmngr, win, onDesktop.addr)
echo "win on current desktop: ", onDesktop

[khchen]

Not yet test your code, but the document says: IVirtualDesktopManager interface inherits from the IUnknown interface. IVirtualDesktopManagerVtbl* {.pure, inheritable.} = object of IUnknownVtbl

[KnorrFG]

You were right, making this change will make the api seem to work (after also changing GetActiveWindow() to GetForegroundWindow()). However, it outputs "false" in the end. And as far as I understand it, this code should always output true. Additionally, It seems that it is not possible to actually manage virtual desktops with a program. For example, you cannot move windows of another process with this api. The only thing I found were some reverse engineered functions in a russian forum, that seem to be buggy. By now, I'm extremely annoyed with the winapi, and I will probably just cut virtual desktop supports from my plans.

I'd be willing to open a pull request to contribute the API above if you want me to, but I read somewhere else that you autogenerated most of the files, so I'm not sure, how useful that is.

[theAkito]

By now, I'm extremely annoyed with the winapi

Who isn't?

There is a reason why most people dealing with Windows are either using platform-independent code or the new hipster C# crap and only a little bit of C++, if necessary.

For my project, I need to use the low level Windows API, because the new hipster crap is too high level for what I want to do. That is the reason I'm using the Windows API in the form of winim.

I would recommend any developer to only use the actual Windows API, if they really have to.

Trust me, you do not want to know how many hours of my time I already spent on fixing some Windows API implementation, just because the Documentation was unclear about a minor detail. Rarely, the documentation may even be wrong.