What does "1" in "D2D1" stands for? - winapi

D2D1 is the namespace for Direct2D technology in Win32. However I don't understand the etymology of this name. The D2D part most likely refers to Direct2D, however the last 1 puzzles me...
There are also a lot of classes with "1" as a suffix: IDWriteFactory1, IDWriteFont1, IDWriteTextLayout1, etc. — what is their purpose, and difference from the similar objects without the suffix?

COM interfaces are usually named with increasing numbers to allow for versioning. Once a COM interface has been published publically, COM rules dictate that the interface is not allowed to be changed anymore, or else compatibility with existing code breaks. If new functionality needs to be added, a new interface has to be exposed. Let's take IDWriteFactory1 for example. Today, that is a first release interface. In the future, maybe IDWriteFactory2 will be added that extends IDWriteFactory1 with new methods. Existing code is preserved, since they don't know anything about IDWriteFactory2, but new code could create an IDWriteFactory1 object and query it to see if it supports IDWriteFactory2 and if so then use the newer methods as needed.
The naming of the D2D1 namespace is likely similar. It is probably being used for versioning purposes (Direct2D v1 ?). Maybe there will be a D2D2 (Direct2D v2) namespace added in the future for things that don't fit in the existing Direct2D architecture. Who knows for sure.

Related

Is it possible to show comments retrieved from /// <inerithdoc cref=""/>

I like intellisense and I think everyone should always add structured comments on classes and methods, I say so because the concept of being "self commenting code" is per se a wrong practice.
How do you draw the line between something that for the creator is obvious but this isn't true for any other developer?
In my company we have a wide range of very useful shared NuGet packages, but most of them have no comments, or at least in the interfaces. This cause the consumer class, using IoC, to blindly use the interfaces loosing completely the comments and therefore the intellisense.
Maybe I don't create the NuGet packages in the right way, but so far the best practice I found, is to add comments in the interfaces and add in the implementing class, the comment: /// <inerithdoc cref=""/>.
This helps me share the documentation, parameters and return type descriptions and so on.
Now the inherithdoc, is mostly used for the XML documentation generation, but not really helpful when it comes to access the description from the implementation class.
An example, I have IMyClass with all the nice comments, if I open MyClass which implements IMyClass, I can read through the code but I don't have straight access to the comments and it is very annoying to be forced to jump back and forth to the Interface in order to read them.
So a possible solution would be to copy the comments across Interfaces and implementing Classes, but I hate duplication, and you can easily end up updating the descriptions here but not there.
So my question for the community is, how do you handle this? Is there Any extension that shows me the description maybe as part of the codelens?
Hovering the mouse on the cref attribute, allow me to get the description of the class/interface and methods, but not parameters.

Swift: Do protocols even have a real purpose?

I'm wondering why protocols are used in swift. In every case I've had to use one so far (UICollectionViewDelegate, UICollectionViewDataSource) I've noted that they don't even have to be added to the class declaration for my code to work. All they do is make it such that your class needs to have certain methods in it so that it can compile. Beats me why this is useful other then as a little post it note to help you keep track of what your classes do.
I'm assuming I'm wrong though. Would anyone care to point out why to me please?
A protocol defines a blueprint of methods, properties, and other requirements that suit a particular task or piece of functionality. The protocol doesn’t actually provide an implementation for any of these requirements—it only describes what an implementation will look like.
So it's basically an interface, right?
You use an interface when you want to define a "contract" for your code. In most cases, the purpose of this is to enable multiple implementations of that contract. For example, you can provide a real implementation, and a fake one for testing.
Further Reading
Protocols
What is the point of an Interface?
It allows flexible linkage between parts of code. Once the protocol is defined it can be used by code that doesn't need to know what will be done when the methods are called or exactly what object (or struct or enum) is actually being used. An alternative approach could be setting callbacks or blocks but by using a protocol as complete set of behaviours can be grouped and documented.
Some other code will typically create the concrete instance and pass it to the code expecting the protocol (sometimes the concrete instance will pass itself). In some cases neither the implementation of the code using it need to be aware of each other and it can all be set up by some other code to keep it reusable and testable.
It might be possible to do this in some languages by duck typing which is to say that a runtime inspection could allow a object to act in such a context without particular declaration but this is probably not possible to do at compile time in all cases and it could also be error prone if worked out implicitly.

How to use IProjectionBuffer in MEF without creating editor instance?

I am trying to create a Visual Studio extension which handles a multi-language content type. Much like some mvc-templates and Django or ASP.NET which a certain part of the code is in another language.
I know that I should use Projection and I already checked Django for Visual Studio extension but the solution there includes creating a Language Service and going to the trouble of creating all bits and pieces related to a code editor. Here I am trying to achieve the same goal just by using MEF.
I know that you can use IProjectionBuffer CreateProjectionBuffer() to create a projection but the question is how to replace the current TextBuffer with the created one and when is the best time to do it.
Also one may expect that if he specifies a base definition of type "projection" like this:
[Export]
[Name("Whatever")]
[BaseDefinition("code")]
[BaseDefinition("projection")]
internal static ContentTypeDefinition WhateverContentType = null;
the received TextBuffer in providers to be of type IProjectionBuffer (after all IProjectionBuffer is inherited from ITextBuffer). Which are not and it seems that a projection base definition has no effect what so ever.
So if I want to rephrase my question in a tldr version:
How and when do you apply an IProjectionBuffer to current view (using MEF and without creating an editor instance)?
So if I understand your question correctly, the answer is "you don't." A IWpfTextView is bound to a implementation of ITextBuffer (or a derived type, like IProjectionBuffer) at creation time, and can't be changed. Even if you could, many other extensions and language services would be most surprised by this and would probably crash.
To address your second question about content types: simply declaring you have a base content type of "projection" doesn't make you a projection buffer. All that really states is you might be creating projection buffers of that type, and when you do you want some extra ITagger support so taggers project through to the source buffers as you might expect them to.

Prism, mapping region to a view

I'm quite new to Prism. I'm studying QuickStarts shipped with it as well as other examples on the net. Almost all of them make modules aware of what region their view(s) get dropped into. Typically, the method Initalize of a module has a line like the the following.
RegionManager.Regions["LeftRegion"].Add(fundView);
I feel quite uncomfortable with that. There's a similar discussion but I think that it should be the responsibility of the shell component to define such mapping. However, I cannot find any example of such approach and I'm not sure whether the bootstrapper is the right place to put such mapping in.
Is this approach completely wrong?
Nothing is completely wrong. But it makes no sense to have the shell/bootstrapper (that by design doesn't know anything about the application it will host) knows what view goes into which region.
Consider an application that can be extended by simply adding modules into a given folder. When you follow the approach that the module knows where it's views want to reside (the mapping is done in Initialize()), this is no problem. I designed my first Prism application that way.
But if your mapping is done in your shell you always have to update your shell (which is part of the base application, not any module) when you want to add another module. This runs contrary to the loosely coupling paradigm. Besides that you have to create one base application for every module constellation. And there are (2^number of modules) permutations you have to cover. That results in loosing your flexibility you gained by using Prism.

CodeIgniter: Decision making for creating of library & helper in CodeIgniter

After developing in CodeIgniter for awhile, I find it difficult to make decisions when to create a custom library and when to create a custom helper.
I do understand that both allow having business logic in it and are reusable across the framework (calling from different controller etc.)
But I strongly believe that the fact that CI core developers are separating libraries from helpers, there has to be a reason behind it and I guess, this is the reason waiting for me to discover and get enlightened.
CI developers out there, pls advise.
i think it's better to include an example.
I could have a
class notification_lib {
function set_message() { /*...*/}
function get_message() {/*...*/}
function update_message() {/*...*/}
}
Alternatively, i could also include all the functions into a helper.
In a notification_helper.php file, i will include set_message(), get_message(), update_message()..
Where either way, it still can be reused. So this got me thinking about the decision making point about when exactly do we create a library and a helper particularly in CI.
In a normal (framework-less) php app, the choice is clear as there is no helper, you will just need to create a library in order to reuse codes. But here, in CI, I would like to understand the core developers seperation of libraries and helpers
Well the choice comes down to set of functions or class. The choice is almost the same as a instance class verses a static class.
If you have just a simply group of functions then you only need to make a group of functions. If these group of functions share a lot of data, then you need to make a class that has an instance to store this data in between the method (class function) calls.
Do you have many public or private properties to store relating to your notification messages?
If you use a class, you could set multiple messages through the system then get_messages() could return a private array of messages. That would make it perfect for being a library.
There is a question I ask myself when deciding this that I think will help you as well. The question is: Am I providing a feature to my framework or am I consolidating?
If you have a feature that you are adding to your framework, then you'll want to create a library for that. Form validation, for example, is a feature that you are adding to a framework. Even though you can do form validation without this library, you're creating a standard system for validation which is a feature.
However, there is also a form helper which helps you create the HTML of forms. The big difference from the form validation library is that the form helper isn't creating a new feature, its just a set of related functions that help you write the HTML of forms properly.
Hopefully this differentiation will help you as it has me.
First of all, you should be sure that you understand the difference between CI library and helper class. Helper class is anything that helps any pre-made thing such as array, string, uri, etc; they are there and PHP already provides functions for them but you still create a helper to add more functionality to them.
On the other hand, library can be anything like something you are creating for the first time, any solution which might not be necessarily already out there.
Once you understand this difference fully, taking decision must not be that difficult.
Helper contains a group of functions to help you do a particular task.
Available helpers in CI
Libraries usually contain non-CI specific functionality. Like an image library. Something which is portable between applications.
Available libraries in CI
Source link
If someone ask me what the way you follow when time comes to create Helpers or Libraries.
I think these differences:
Class : In a nutshell, a Class is a blueprint for an object. And an object encapsulates conceptually related State and Responsibility of something in your Application and usually offers an programming interface with which to interact with these. This fosters code reuse and improves maintainability.
Functions : A function is a piece of code which takes one more input in the form of parameter and does some processing and returns a value. You already have seen many functions like fopen() and fread() etc. They are built-in functions but PHP gives you option to create your own functions as well.
So go for Class i.e. libraries if any one point matches
global variable need to use in two or more functions or even one, I hate using Global keyword
default initialization as per each time call or load
some tasks are private to entity not publicly open, think of functions never have public modifiers why?
function to function dependencies i.e. tasks are separated but two or more tasks needs it. Think of validate_email check only for email sending script for to,cc,bcc,etc. all of these needs validate_email.
And Lastly not least all related tasks i.e. functions should be placed in single object or file, it's easier for reference and remembrance.
For Helpers : any point which not matches with libraries
Personally I use libraries for big things, say an FTP-library I built that is a lot faster than CodeIgniters shipped library. This is a class with a lot of methods that share data with each other.
I use helpers for smaller tasks that are not related to a lot of other functionality. Small functions like decorating strings might be an example. Or copying a directory recursively to another location.

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