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[qpkorr]

Hi,

I'm trying to use DDE to send a word to a old Win 3.1 program (a dictionary), under Win XP.

I'm using Joy2DWorld's dde.ahk script, from here
http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21910.

The code successfully opens the program, and displays the word definition I want, but I'm getting an error when I (try to) close the dictionary application. A rather old looking dialog box comes up saying:


Windows DDE

An application using DDE did not respond to the system's exit command.

* Choose Retry to attempt to close the application and return to Windows.
* Choose Continue to repeatedly attempt to close the application and return to Windows.
* Choose Close to exit the application that is not responding. You may lose any unsaved information in this application.


No matter which button I choose, the dictionary still appears in the task manager list (under KeyHH). I need to manually close it.

I'm a little uncertain if the "topic" I'm using is valid - but looking at an AmiPro macro provided with the dictionary, it appears to be a valid topic. I tried using the "System" topic to get a list of valid topics from the dictionary using DDE_Request - but printing the response with msgbox showed the response was empty.

Any ideas what's happening? Is DDE not disconnecting properly, preventing the dictionary from closing?

Thanks!

Here's my code:

[right section alert]

With reference to your problem, I have had mixed results using the code you referenced (seemed to have timing problems with some apps).

However, I found the code posted by Sean (DDE.ZIP) in this post to be very reliable.

[qpkorr]

Thanks to whoever moved this to the right section.

Thanks for the tip about Sean's version - I had seen it, but gone with Joy2DWorld's because it seemed a little more complete, and not so task-specific.

Indeed, I'm somewhat confused by Sean's. In the DDEML.ahk file, I'm not sure which function to use to get DDE_Execute functionality.

And in DDEMessage.ahk, I worried that hWndClient and hWndServer aren't getting set (and whilst I could guess at hWndClient, I'm much less sure of the best way to set hWndServer).

Do you happen to know if DDE_EXECUTE works?

[right section alert]

[Joy2DWorld]

its been a long time ...



DDE_KILL("SERVER_NAME","TOPIC", OPTIONAL_CONNECTION_NUMBER) *should* loop thru all connections and disconnect, when no params, but , would test with explicit server/topic and see if helps.

if so.. let me know and will look into where is bug in global release.



also set __DDE_SafeMode to value


(maybe try DDE_Poke in place of DDE_Execute ?)


hope helpful
_________________
Joyce Jamce

[qpkorr]

First up, thanks so much for taking the time to reply so thoroughly. I really appreciate it.

Thanks also for your code sample for xmplay. The only problem with it seems to be that I think Sean has updated his dde stuff. I say this for two reasons - first, his function names now seem to be more like DdeInitialize, not DDE_Initialize. Second, there seem to be other changes, eg his DdeClientTransaction function is now taking the address of sData, so you probably don't need to in your function call.

The reason I'm saying this is that in trying to adapt your example to his new code, and my application, it's not working. The address of sData is one reason it mightn't work for me - but clearly there's some other reason I've not spotted.

[qpkorr]

Oops! I spoke too soon, whilst I was replying Joy reappeared! Thanks! Yes, it was a while ago I know. Sorry to force your memory to work so hard!

As per my previous response, I like your approach re keeping track of connections etc. For my purposes at least, your approached seemed great.

I guess I have two main questions for you.

First - does DDE_KILL work properly for you, when you supply the server and topic? For both of us, it appears to give errors. It doesn't when called with no arguments.

Second - it's my impression that it's not fully terminating the DDE connection. For me, this manifests that when I try to kill the DDE server application (whilst the client, the ahk script, is still running), I get the error I posted originally, and the server app won't die fully. For our xmplay guest, it seems it's more that the server won't accept more commands. Does it still work for you?

Re __DDE_SafeMode - the help for it says

[Joy2DWorld]

try watching __DDEM___DDE_Topic_List and __DDE_Server

and __DDE_Topic and __DDE_DDEConnection_

within the Kill function.



also could try setting true __DDE_Kill_window_on_Kill
_________________
Joyce Jamce

[qpkorr]

Okay, problem solved perhaps. As best I can tell, your DDE_KILL function was referring to

__DDEM___DDE_Topic_List

where the others referred to

__DDEM_DDE_Topic_List

so nothing was ever getting terminated.

Grrr... does AHK have the equivalent of perl's "use strict" directive? Problems like this should be detected by computers, not humans...

On the plus side - it seems to work perfectly with this change Thanks!

[Joy2DWorld]

great debug!

(actually is human bug in 'translation' for post upload. In original used simulated object function in place of global vars, but seemed to complex so 'simplified' for posting...)
_________________
Joyce Jamce