This site contains older material on Eiffel. For the main Eiffel page, see http://www.eiffel.com.
WEX

ISE note: we are pleased to make WEX, by Robin van Ommeren and Andreas Leitner, part of the Eiffel Shelf. WEX is not an ISE product but the work of Robin and Andreas, who are also the authors of the present introduction. Many thanks to them for contributing such an outstanding and practical tool.

To other EiffelShelf packages.

WEX: Windows Eiffel eXtension Library

What is WEX?

WEX, the Windows Eiffel eXtension library, is, as its name suggests, an extension to WEL, the Windows Eiffel Library, a component of the Windows version of ISE Eiffel.

WEX is free for everybody to use, as defined in the copyright information at the bottom of this page.

Why WEX?

Every programming library always misses something in the opinion of any developer, and WEL is no exception. So we came up with WEX, the developers' extension to WEL.

Its intention is to combine all the extensions to WEL that Eiffel developers have written in the past and future, so all WEL developers can profit from the ideas of fellow developers.

An additional benefit is that we have to buy less third party software without source code. What's worse than third party software crashing your project?

What's in WEX now?

WEX 1.0 combines the extensions to WEL written by Andreas and Robin and contains, among others, the following items:

MCI devices

    Digital video
    CD audio
    Midi sequencer
    Wave audio

Region window capability (windows shaped in any form).

Full featured Splash classes

    Splash window (shaped in any form)
    Splash bitmap (shaped in any form)
    Splash Video (shaped in any form)

Framework for standard application

Extended flat toolbar (loadable from resource file)

It's a nice set of classes to spice up your project. All WEL developers are invited to contribute to WEX. Hope to hear from you guys soon!

What do I need to run WEX?

You will need a copy of ISE Eiffel for Windows 95/98//Me/XPNT/2000, including the WEL library.

You can use either of two techniques to compile an application using WEX:

    You can compile WEX yourself. In this case you need to have access to Visual C++ to compile the resulting C code. It should not be hard to get it running with any other C compiler by adapting the Ace file, although we haven't tried.

    You can also, especially if you don't have a C compiler, rely on precompiled WEX as provided from this site. With this approach the code won't be optimized but you can use WEX off-the-shelf without any further compilation.

How do I install WEX?

WEX consists of 2 major directories: examples and library. Please add them to the ISE Eiffel installation directory (the directory called $EIFFEL4 in the documentation).

If you want to use the precompiled version of WEX, you should also add the corresponding precomp directory to the ISE Eiffel installation directory.

You will also need to define the enviroment variable wex_vc_lib. It should point directly to the directory where the file winmm.lib resides. This is typically c:\program files\devstudio\vc\lib.

Under Windows 95 or 98 you should add the following line to the file autoexec.bat:

    set wex_vc_lib = c:\program files\devstudio\vc\lib

Any Questions?

For any questions, comments or if you would like to contribute to WEX please mail to either:

Downloading WEX

    Click here to download a zip file containing WEX source and examples, 90 KB. (You will need to compile or precompile WEX yourself.)

    Click here to download a precompiled version of WEX, 5.4 MB (you should still download the other files too, if only for the examples). This precompiled WEX relies on precompiled WEL, which is part of the basic ISE Eiffel for Windows delivery, downloadable from this site.

Copyright Information

Permission is hereby granted, without written agreement and without license or royalty fees, to use, copy, modify and/or distribute this package, provided that:

    Copyright notices are retained unchanged

    Any distribution of this package, whether modified or not, includes this file

Permission is hereby also granted, without written agreement and without license or royalty fees, to distribute binary programs which depend on this package, provided that if the binary program depends on a modified version of this package, you must publicly release the modified version of this package.

THIS PACKAGE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT WARRANTY. ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS BE LIABLE TO ANY PARTY FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS PACKAGE.