IBM Open Class Library

Description

This C++ class library provides a whole set of different functionality:

• First of all a full OS/2 GUI support: from PM windows and messaging to standard and extended controls up to generating resizable dialogs and 2D graphics output.

• Application control, error handling and threading

• Collections (flat and tree), supporting several implementation variants, together with helper classes (cursors, automatic pointers etc.)

• Complex mathematics

• Database access

Note: Printing is not supported out of the box: You would have to code everything to getting a "printing device context" directly in C, then you can use the 2D graphics functionality of IOCL to output your data to the printer.

The class library implements (besides the PM "messages" support) an own messaging system that allows all kinds of "objects" to "notify" any other "observers" about anything that might be interesting. This mechanism is mainly designed to being used with the VAC/C++ 3.0 Visual Builder, but it is also helpful when directly used.

There are two versions of this class library available for OS/2 that come with VAC/C++ 3.0 package or VAC/C++ 4.0 package, respectively. There are major changes from version 3.0 to 4.0 incorporated, so the two are not easily compatible, meinly not when switching from a 4.0 project to 3.0.

Source and References

see VAC/C++ 3.0 package and VAC/C++ 4.0 package

License

IBM Commercial software. Discontinued.

Related Articles

• Open Class Library FAQ by Stéphane Charette (November 1997)