Console+Windows' form

Question

Are there winAPI function (without classes) to create a daughter window from console application. It necessary to print graphics of shapes on window, and input commands to conso

Answer 1

I'm not sure if you mean something specific by "daughter", but it's certainly possible for a console application to create a window (or as many as it likes). It's also possible for a windowed application to allocate a console.

Allocating a console from a windowed program is theoretically a bit work, but does have one advantage: you can write the majority of your windowing "stuff" using an application framework of your choice (Qt, wxWidgets, etc.)

If you work directly with the Windows API, it's a bit easier to create a console application and create windows as you see fit. About all you have to do in this case is write your code just as you normally would a windowed program, but instead of WinMain, name your entry function main. Based on that, the linker will automatically set the "console" flag in the executable, and Windows will give it a console when it starts up. The big advantage here is that C++ standard library gets initialized automatically, so things like cin all work without any extra effort on your part. If you start from a Windowed program and allocate a console, all that'll work by default will be the Windows API functions (ReadConsoleInput, WriteConsoleOutput, ReadFile, WriteFile, etc.) You can get the C and C++ functions to work, but you have to deal with some fairly poorly documented areas (that are all open to change with the next release of the compiler) to make it happen. I'd generally avoid this unless I was only going to use the Windows API functions to deal with the console anyway.

Answer 2

it's simpler to create console window for your GUI application. Have a look here

Answer 3

Here is a much easier way that may work well for you, provided you're using Visual Studio:

If you are, you can start a forms application by creating a forms project, add the necessary forms, and then change the application type (by right-clicking the project and selecting properties) and changing it to a console application. It will still spawn the form windows as you would expect, but will also start a Console window (which will still be populated by cout, etc...)!