WORD expected in DialogBox()

[scwizzo]

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.

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

[SMurf]

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

[scwizzo]

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?

[SMurf]

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 &

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.

[scwizzo]

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

[SMurf]

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...

[scwizzo]

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.