Richard,
Richard Harrison wrote:
What I would really like is an executable or DLL I can use from another application. I don't have much experience with windows programming and in particular DDE which you use for the console GUI so I realise I may be asking a silly question. I would be happy with a simple console application with interaction through stdin, stdout and stderr, so my question is - what's the best way of building such an application?
The native Windows version puts up its own console GUI if stdin and stdout are not present. So the simplest way to use your application from another is to use CreateProcess and pass handles to your standard input and standard output through the StartupInfo structure. You can then communicate through the input and output streams. DDE is only used where in Unix signals would be used: i.e. to interrupt or kill the application, so you don't have to use it.
If you want something running in a console you may find it simpler to use Cygwin which provides a more Unix-like interface and in particular, signals.
Regards, David