USER MODULE =========== USER implements windowing and messaging subsystems. It also contains code for common controls and for other miscellaneous stuff (rectangles, clipboard, WNet, etc). Wine USER code is located in windows/, controls/, and misc/ directories. 1. Windowing subsystem Windows are arranged into parent/child hierarchy with one common ancestor for all windows (desktop window). Each window structure contains a pointer to the immediate ancestor (parent window if WS_CHILD style bit is set), a pointer to the sibling (returned by GetWindow(..., GW_NEXT)), a pointer to the owner window (set only for popup window if it was created with valid hwndParent parameter), and a pointer to the first child window (GetWindow(.., GW_CHILD)). All popup and non-child windows are therefore placed in the first level of this hierarchy and their ancestor link (wnd->parent) points to the desktop window. Desktop window - root window | \ '-. | \ '-. popup -> wnd1 -> wnd2 - top level windows | \ '-. '-. | \ '-. '-. child1 child2 -> child3 child4 - child windows Horizontal arrows denote sibling relationship, vertical lines - ancestor/child. To summarize, all windows with the same immediate ancestor are sibling windows, all windows which do not have desktop as their immediate ancestor are child windows. Popup windows behave as topmost top-level windows unless they are owned. In this case the only requirement is that they must precede their owners in the top-level sibling list (they are not topmost). Child windows are confined to the client area of their parent windows (client area is where window gets to do its own drawing, non-client area consists of caption, menu, borders, intrinsic scrollbars, and minimize/maximize/close buttons). Another fairly important concept is "z-order". It is derived from the ancestor/child hierarchy and is used to determine "above/below" relationship. For instance, in the example above, z-order is child1->popup->child2->child3->wnd1->child4->wnd2->desktop. Current active window ("foreground window" in Win32) is moved to the front of z-order unless its top-level ancestor owns popup windows. All these issues are dealt with (or supposed to be) in windows/winpos.c Wine specifics: in default and managed mode each top-level window gets its own X counterpart with desktop window being basically a fake stub. In desktop mode, however, only desktop window has X window associated with it. 2. Messaging subsystem Each Windows task/thread has its own message queue - this is where it gets messages from. Messages can be generated on the fly (WM_PAINT, WM_NCPAINT, WM_TIMER), they can be created by the system (hardware messages), they can be posted by other tasks/threads (PostMessage), or they can be sent by other tasks/threads (SendMessage). Message priority: First the system looks for sent messages, then for posted messages, then for hardware messages, then it checks if the queue has the "dirty window" bit set, and, finally, it checks for expired timers. See windows/message.c. From all these different types of messages, only posted messages go directly into the private message queue. System messages (even in Win95) are first collected in the system message queue and then they either sit there until Get/PeekMessage gets to process them or, as in Win95, if system queue is getting clobbered, a special thread ("raw input thread") assigns them to the private queues. Sent messages are queued separately and the sender sleeps until it gets a reply. Special messages are generated on the fly depending on the window/queue state. If the window update region is not empty, the system sets the QS_PAINT bit in the owning queue and eventually this window receives a WM_PAINT message (WM_NCPAINT too if the update region intersects with the non-client area). A timer event is raised when one of the queue timers expire. Depending on the timer parameters DispatchMessage either calls the callback function or the window procedure. If there are no messages pending the task/thread sleeps until messages appear. There are several tricky moments (open for discussion) - a) System message order has to be honored and messages should be processed within correct task/thread context. Therefore when Get/PeekMessage encounters unassigned system message and this message appears not to be for the current task/thread it should either skip it (or get rid of it by moving it into the private message queue of the target task/thread - Win95, AFAIK) and look further or roll back and then yield until this message gets processed when system switches to the correct context (Win16). In the first case we lose correct message ordering, in the second case we have the infamous synchronous system message queue. Here is a post to one of the OS/2 newsgroup I found to be relevant: " Here's the problem in a nutshell, and there is no good solution. Every possible solution creates a different problem. With a windowing system, events can go to many different windows. Most are sent by applications or by the OS when things relating to that window happen (like repainting, timers, etc.) Mouse input events go to the window you click on (unless some window captures the mouse). So far, no problem. Whenever an event happens, you put a message on the target window's message queue. Every process has a message queue. If the process queue fills up, the messages back up onto the system queue. This is the first cause of apps hanging the GUI. If an app doesn't handle messages and they back up into the system queue, other apps can't get any more messages. The reason is that the next message in line can't go anywhere, and the system won't skip over it. This can be fixed by making apps have bigger private message queues. The SIQ fix does this. PMQSIZE does this for systems without the SIQ fix. Applications can also request large queues on their own. Another source of the problem, however, happens when you include keyboard events. When you press a key, there's no easy way to know what window the keystroke message should be delivered to. Most windowing systems use a concept known as "focus". The window with focus gets all incoming keyboard messages. Focus can be changed from window to window by apps or by users clicking on winodws. This is the second source of the problem. Suppose window A has focus. You click on window B and start typing before the window gets focus. Where should the keystrokes go? On the one hand, they should go to A until the focus actually changes to B. On the other hand, you probably want the keystrokes to go to B, since you clicked there first. OS/2's solution is that when a focus-changing event happens (like clicking on a window), OS/2 holds all messages in the system queue until the focus change actually happens. This way, subsequent keystrokes go to the window you clicked on, even if it takes a while for that window to get focus. The downside is that if the window takes a real long time to get focus (maybe it's not handling events, or maybe the window losing focus isn't handling events), everything backs up in the system queue and the system appears hung. There are a few solutions to this problem. One is to make focus policy asynchronous. That is, focus changing has absolutely nothing to do with the keyboard. If you click on a window and start typing before the focus actually changes, the keystrokes go to the first window until focus changes, then they go to the second. This is what X-windows does. Another is what NT does. When focus changes, keyboard events are held in the system message queue, but other events are allowed through. This is "asynchronous" because the messages in the system queue are delivered to the application queues in a different order from that with which they were posted. If a bad app won't handle the "lose focus" message, it's of no consequence - the app receiving focus will get its "gain focus" message, and the keystrokes will go to it. The NT solution also takes care of the application queue filling up problem. Since the system delivers messages asynchronously, messages waiting in the system queue will just sit there and the rest of the messages will be delivered to their apps. The OS/2 SIQ solution is this: When a focus-changing event happens, in addition to blocking further messages from the application queues, a timer is started. When the timer goes off, if the focus change has not yet happened, the bad app has its focus taken away and all messages targetted at that window are skipped. When the bad app finally handles the focus change message, OS/2 will detect this and stop skipping its messages. As for the pros and cons: The X-windows solution is probably the easiest. The problem is that users generally don't like having to wait for the focus to change before they start typing. On many occasions, you can type and the characters end up in the wrong window because something (usually heavy system load) is preventing the focus change from happening in a timely manner. The NT solution seems pretty nice, but making the system message queue asynchronous can cause similar problems to the X-windows problem. Since messages can be delivered out of order, programs must not assume that two messages posted in a particular order will be delivered in that same order. This can break legacy apps, but since Win32 always had an asynchronous queue, it is fair to simply tell app designers "don't do that". It's harder to tell app designers something like that on OS/2 - they'll complain "you changed the rules and our apps are breaking." The OS/2 solution's problem is that nothing happens until you try to change window focus, and then wait for the timeout. Until then, the bad app is not detected and nothing is done." (by David Charlap) b) Intertask/interthread SendMessage. The system has to inform the target queue about the forthcoming message, then it has to carry out the context switch and wait until the result is available. Win16 stores necessary parameters in the queue structure and then calls DirectedYield() function. However, in Win32 there could be several messages pending sent by preemptively executing threads, and in this case SendMessage has to build some sort of message queue for sent messages. Another issue is what to do with messages sent to the sender when it is blocked inside its own SendMessage.