Dr. Dobb's Journal April 1998
Windows CE 1.0 versus Windows CE 2.0
The major differences between Windows CE 1.0 and Windows 2.0 include the following:
- Version 1.0 only supported raster fonts. Version 2.0 supports TrueType fonts.
- Version 1.0 did not support any of the OLE Win32 API functions (CoInitializeEx, for instance). Version 2.0 supports the OLE API. The Visual C++ Toolkit for CE will also include the Active Template Library for OLE development.
- Printing is also new for Version 2.0. However, there is no print manager and there is no spooling of print jobs. Hence, only one application can print at a time. Also, multiple print jobs are not allowed.
- Version 1.0 only supports 2 bpp color. Version 2.0 supports 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 24, and 32 bpp. This covers the same range of support as the other Win32 platforms.
- Custom palettes are supported in 2.0.
- Support for Java has been announced, although the details remain elusive.
The CE Embedded Toolkit
The CE Embedded Toolkit for Visual C++ 5.0 has been announced to enable embedded developers to customize the CE kernel. This enables a specialized version of CE using a minimum set of software modules to support the platform's requirements (in order to minimize the memory footprint and maximize performance of the operating system).
For example, you could build a version of the OS that contains the kernel and a selected set of communications modules but which does not provide a graphical user interface. In addition, Visual Basic 5.0 and Visual J++ have add-on packages to support CE as one of their target platforms. A Visual Basic run-time interpreter and Java virtual machine are part of these add-on packages.
-- B.R.
Copyright © 1998, Dr. Dobb's Journal