CODEWITHSUNDEEP
windowsformssystem
null
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Reputation: 51

Does every window running use System.Windows.Forms.Form?

Does every window running use System.Windows.Forms.Form?

The title says it. From Java to C++ to Visual Basic to Console Apps. Does every compiled window use the class System.Drawing.Forms.Form?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 105

Answers (2)

Eli Algranti
Eli Algranti

Reputation: 9007

Short answer No. System.Windows.Forms.Form is an abstraction used by the WinForms .Net library to interact with the actual Windows provided by the OS.

Other languages have other abstractions: Java could use Swing or AWT or any other UI library which offer different ways to draw forms.

Likewise C++ could employ an abstraction over the OS provided objects (i.e. the MFC library) or use the Windows API directly.

All the UI libraries need in the end to use the Windows API to draw their windows, but not all of them do it to the same extent, so .Net's UI libraries will use some of the same API calls as Java's or C++'s UI libraries.

I'll update this answer if I find a good explanation of how the UI and UI libraries work on windows.

I remember reading a good one not long ago with some of the history and the changes in Windows 8 but don't remember where.

Upvotes: 0

Robert P
Robert P

Reputation: 15978

No.

In .NET, System.Windows.Forms is (essentially) just a tool to draw windows, but it is not the only tool. Other languages have their own tools; Java has the Swing libraries, Python and Perl have several other GUI toolkits, each which do things differently. Console Apps use an entirely different way of presenting information. How things are drawn not only depends on the language, but also the GUI API used. For example, a window might be entirely drawn using C++ and DirectX and custom drawing routines; these would not use .NET at all, nor any underlying tools that .NET uses. That same window might be drawn with C++ and Open GL; the same data might be displayed, but the routines invoked to draw it would be different. In fact, you could do all the drawing with assembly if you were really masochistic!

Upvotes: 1

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