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Next: 4.6 COM Header Files Up: 4 The Component Object Previous: 4.4.2 Calling Conventions

4.5 Source Issues

The OSKit header files defining COM interfaces do not use the traditional Win32 type names used in the corresponding Microsoft header files; instead, they follow the naming and style conventions used in the rest of the OSKit. For example, the type representing a 32-bit unsigned integer is called oskit_u32_t instead of DWORD as in Win32, and the type representing the standard COM stream interface is named oskit_stream_t instead of IStream. This is done for two reasons:

However, all of the COM interfaces in the OSKit use the standard COM function calling and interface layout conventions, so that binary-level compatibility with Win32 environments is possible (though it hasn't been tried yet). Since COM is primarily a binary-level rather than source-level standard, this appeared to be the best approach to retaining compatibility with COM while maximizing the flexibility and ease-of-use of the OSKit.



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