The predicates in this section deal with MS-Windows `Dynamic Data Exchange' or DDE protocol. (50) A Windows DDE conversation is a form of interprocess communication based on sending reserved window-events between the communicating processes.
See also section 7.4 for loading Windows DLL's into SWI-Prolog.
The DDE client interface allows Prolog to talk to DDE server programs. We will demonstrate the use of the DDE interface using the Windows PROGMAN (Program Manager) application:
1 ?- open_dde_conversation(progman, progman, C).
C = 0
2 ?- dde_request(0, groups, X)
--> Unifies X with description of groups
3 ?- dde_execute(0, '[CreateGroup("DDE Demo")]').
Yes
4 ?- close_dde_conversation(0).
Yes
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For details on interacting with progman, use the SDK online
manual section on the Shell DDE interface. See also the Prolog
library(progman), which may be used to write simple Windows
setup scripts in Prolog.
CF_TEXT
data in DDE parlance) representing that data, if the request is
successful. If unsuccessful, Value will be unified with a
term of form
error(<Reason>), identifying the problem. This
call uses SWI-Prolog string objects to return the value rather then
atoms to reduce the load on the atom-space. See section
4.23 for a discussion on this data type.
POKE command to the server on the specified Item.
Command is passed as data of type CF_TEXT.
The (autoload) library(dde) defines primitives to
realise simple DDE server applications in SWI-Prolog. These features are
provided as of version 2.0.6 and should be regarded prototypes. The
C-part of the DDE server can handle some more primitives, so if you need
features not provided by this interface, please study library(dde).
+Service(+Topic, +Item, +Value)Service is the name of the DDE service provided (like progman in the client example above). Topic is either an atom, indicating Goal only handles requests on this topic or a variable that also appears in Goal. Item and Value are variables that also appear in Goal. Item represents the request data as a Prolog atom. (51)
The example below registers the Prolog current_prolog_flag/2 predicate to be accessible from other applications. The request may be given from the same Prolog as well as from another application.
?- dde_register_service(prolog(current_prolog_flag, F, V),
current_prolog_flag(F, V)).
?- open_dde_conversation(prolog, current_prolog_flag, Handle),
dde_request(Handle, home, Home),
close_dde_conversation(Handle).
Home = '/usr/local/lib/pl-2.0.6/'
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Handling DDE execute requests is very similar. In this
case the template is of the form:
+Service(+Topic, +Item)
Passing a Value argument is not needed as execute requests either succeed or fail. If Goal fails, a `not processed' is passed back to the caller of the DDE request.