Can PltInstallFile be made useful?
In several messages on this forum there have been admonitions to use the API call to
PltInstallFile to install files and, as is the duty of any good citizen :-) if this is
the recommended way, this is what I intended to do.
Unfortunately, the CDK documentation does not offer a SINGLE example of use of this
API call and is quite impenetrably opaque as to what the FileInstallType structure
should be.
typedef struct
{
TCHAR szDir[ 64 ];
TCHAR szExt[ 256];
DWORD dwMask;
TCHAR szModule[ 256 ];
DWORD dwCreatorID;
TCHAR szName[ 256 ];
} FileInstallType;
I also searched the newsgroup archives with no better luck.
The only field that appears obvious is szDir, the name of the folder containing the
file to install. Most of the other fields seem to make sense for a conduit but not for
the installation of a simple prc file:
� szExt - can this be blank?
� dwMask - I could not find documentation on what to put here
� szModule - The Install dll... What do I put if there is no dll, for example if the
installer is an application?
� dwCreatorID - is this needed and what should that be?
� szName - documentation says name of the conduit. Is this the place to put
"MyApp.prc" ?
Again, I could not find any documentation providing the answers. At this stage it
appears simpler to reverse-engineer the registry setting than to use this undocumented
API call. I am at a loss to understand why a simpler PltInstallPrc was not provided
with two parameters being the name of the folder and the name of the prc file.
Does anyone know the answer? I have written a simple Widows application that can be
called from any installer (I am using Wise, myself) and I am proposing to make it
freely available in source form. In the present form it does the user selection with a
nice dialog and in a clean manner. I have not yet found the way to do the installation
in the approved way...
Why do this? More and more applications install some files on the PC - for example
the documentation - in addition to the prc files themselves. So it appears very
desirable to offer a single installer file that does both and this should be easy if
only PltInstallFile can be made useful.
Jean Ichbiah
Textware Solutions
www.fitaly.com
--
For information on using the Palm Developer Forums, or to unsubscribe, please see
http://www.palm.com/devzone/mailinglists.html
