I am trying to design a Win32/C program that maintains a bi-directional linked list, individual nodes of which can be modified, inserted, deleted, etc. by a visual interface. I have created small bitmap images representing different node "types."
I think would be fairly straightforward to write a paint procedure that cycles through the linked list to paint bitmaps corresponding to the different node types. The problem is, I don't see how they could be selected/acted upon unless the nodes are "objectified" in some way. (Maybe mouse clicks could be correlated to the bitmap dumps appearing in the client window, but that sounds like a lot of programming overhead.)
Reading ahead into Petzold, I don't quite see how I will accomplish this. I'm guessing that each node could be a button control. The problem I see is that (1) the buttons would be printed on the main window (frame), not a dialog box, and (2) there is no standard button I'm aware of that would incorporate my bitmap. Petzold mentions user-defined controls. Perhaps I could create a custom button composed of the bitmap, but that sounds complicated.
Am I making sense? I'm trying to get a realistic idea of how to actually implement this as I read through Petzold. And yes, I am an absolute Win32 newbie. Ideas or directions would be appreciated!
