BOWEL:
Basic ObjectWindows Emulation Library
Version 1.0

• Overview
• License
• Design and Example
• Download

Overview

BOWEL is an emulator for Borland's once-mighty ObjectWindows Library^TM (OWL) which is based on the Microsoft Foundation Classes^TM (MFC). It also contains an emulation of the BIDS library. It is intended to be used as an MFC-to-OWL porting tool, i.e. a tool which can aid the migration from an OWL-based application to an MFC-based application. It is not intended to be used for writing new applications - it is better to start an application as a pure MFC application (or pure OWL if you're the sentimental type). It is also not recommended as a permanent solution because an application written in BOWEL will almost inevitably be a hybrid in the sense that it will end up using two equivalent libraries instead of just one. BOWEL's major strength is that it can greatly reduce the amount of time required to transform an OWL-based application into a runnable MFC-based application.

Version 1.0 of BOWEL only supports the dialog-box parts of an OWL application. Most significantly, it does not implement OWL's document-view classes. This would usually mean that any document-view portions of an OWL application would have to be explicitly ported to MFC before significant use of BOWEL can be made. There is probably no reason why OWL's document-view architecture could not also be emulated, but this has not yet been done.

Furthermore, BOWEL is very much a work in progress which does not yet implement all of the classes a port might require and even in the classes that are supported, there are many OWL methods that have not yet been implemented. The reason for the latter is simply that they have not yet been needed. In most cases implementing a new OWL method on an existing class is simply a matter of finding the equivalent MFC method and using it to enulate the corresponding OWL method.

NOTES:

1. ObjectWindows Library and OWL are trademarks of Inprise/Borland.
2. Microsoft Foundation Classes and MFC are trademarks of Microsoft.

Licence

The BOWEL library is released under the following licence whose purpose is to protect us from all legal action:

Psionix makes this software code available free of charge for non-commercial purposes only. You may make copies of the code but you must include all of this notice on any copy.

The code was developed for Psionix purposes and Psionix does not warrant that it is error free or fit for any purpose. Psionix disclaims all liability for all claims, expenses, losses, damages and costs any user may incur as a result of using, copying or modifying the code.

In addition, it is a condition of use of this library that you share any improvements that you make to this library with us, so that we can incorporate it into the distributed version of the product.

Design and Example

The design of BOWEL is described here and a simple example of its use is described here.

Download

The BOWEL can be downloaded as a ~400K zip archive here.