Mastering the Windows Eiffel Library
Glenn Maughan, Raphael Simon · 1999
An object-oriented approach to building Windows software requires at least three components. These are: an object-oriented language that provides proper support for object oriented concepts, an object-oriented encapsulation of the Windows API library and a set of base or kernel classes that provide all of the necessary data structures and abstractions needed to build software. The language used in this tutorial is Eiffel. Eiffel is a pure object-oriented language designed from the ground up to support the production of quality software.The API encapsulation library is the Windows Eiffel Library (WEL) providing a complete and easy way to use encapsulation of the Windows API. And finally, the base library used is the EiffelBase library providing a myriad of standard software component abstractions. These three tools provide a surprisingly powerful way of engineering quality Windows software.This tutorial explores the use of object technology, COM, and the WEL library for building quality Windows software. The components that the WEL library provides and how to use them are discussed incrementally through the development of a small application. COM and the Eiffel COM interface (EiffelCOM) are used to interact with existing Windows components and to componentize the developed application.The tutorial provides a sufficient description of using object technology, COM, and the WEL library for use in constructing complete Windows applications.