WORD expected in DialogBox()

I don't fully understand what the compiler means by saying it expects a WORD. I went through winprog.org, and some other examples, and still don't quite understand what's happening.

Code:

case ID_FILE_DLG:
     {
           DLGTEMPLATE TEMP;
           TEMP.style = DS_CENTER | DS_MODALFRAME;
           TEMP.x = CW_USEDEFAULT;
           TEMP.y = CW_USEDEFAULT;
           TEMP.cx = 350;
           TEMP.cy = 250;
           TEMP.cdit = 1;
                        
           DLGITEMTEMPLATE Temp;
           Temp.style = WS_POPUP | WS_VISIBLE | BS_PUSHBUTTON;
           Temp.x = 25;
           Temp.y = 25;
           Temp.cx = 50;
           Temp.cy = 50;
           Temp.id = ID_DLGEND;
						
           DialogBox(GetModuleHandle(NULL), MAKEINTRESOURCE(TEMP), // <-- WORD expected here
	         hwnd, DlgProc);
     }
     break;

Error: `struct DLGTEMPLATE' used where a `WORD' was expected

DialogBox expects a resource identifier (which is a WORD). If you are creating the dialog structures in memory yourself then DialogBoxIndirect is for you.

Changing it to DialogBoxIndirect() just gives me this error;

cannot convert `DLGTEMPLATE' to `const DLGTEMPLATE*' for argument `2' to `int DialogBoxIndirectParamA(HINSTANCE__*, const DLGTEMPLATE*, HWND__*, BOOL (*)(HWND__*, UINT, WPARAM, LPARAM), LPARAM)'

the code is the same as above, except with DialogBoxIndirect() instead of DialogBox(). What does it mean by a constant dialog template?

That's because it's expecting a pointer to the structure as opposed to the value of it. In which case you use the "address of" operator &

Code:

DialogBoxIndirect(GetModuleHandle(NULL), &TEMP, hwnd, DlgProc);

This MSDN Library page has an example right at the bottom that should help you. Creating templates yourself is pretty tricky.

Thank you, it compiles now. It doesn't show up, but it compiles none the less. Thanks again.

Try it with no controls (cdit = 0) first.
The problem is that the function expects everything about the dialog to be in one long contigious area of memory. Notice you're declaring TEMP and Temp seperately: this doesn't necessarily mean that where one ends in memory the other begins.

The example I pointed you towards demonstrates this by allocating 1024 bytes of memory and then using the various pointers to fill in the information. Alignment of the structures is also important; modern compilers tend to space them up to 16 bytes apart for performance reasons but the function expects a maximum of 4 bytes space.

I can't help but feel you've jumped in at the deep end here...

Now that you mentioned that, I think i might have too. I have some basic knowledge/understanding of windows programming, but dialogs are just getting confusing. I couldn't get it to work in a resource, so i thought i'd try it without a .rc file.

Changing the cdit = 0 makes the menu bar dissapear, even if i change the CW_USEDEFAULT starting locations to something different. Is there a way to use 'new' and 'delete' to specify the memory for both the DLGTEMPLATE and DLGITEMTEMPLATE? Thanks for being understanding so far

EDIT: I tried using the resource version again, and it would compile, but it says there is a syntax error on every line in the resource file. What am I missing? I followed the winprog.net example/tutorial to a 'T' and it still has the syntax errors.

EDIT 2: Nevermind, did some searching on this site and got it all working. Thanks for your help smurf.