dwTerm is a software terminal to your program. Build only the core of your project as a DLL, and run it by dwTerm in which the useful windows, functions and handler-scheme are prepared for your DLL. Spending little effort in maintaining the output on the display window, in parsing input strings, in scrolling the output, and in other stuffs, you can concentrate on your main programming.

For example, if you want your program to receive users' commands and to simply display some texts or graphs and you don't want any complex or luxurious design of the main window with many child windows, dwTerm will satisfy you. This may be the case, especially if you are going to program to calculate or do a numerical analysis but you know nothing about creating a window and even don't want to learn it. The following features of dwTerm help your work.

• DLLs better than EXEs

  In the case above some programmers may try to build and run an EXE file (*.exe) in a dos window. Don't do that. Build your core codes as a DLL file (*.dll), instead of an EXE, and run it by dwTerm.exe. This method not only lets dwTerm take other parts of the whole program, but also saves the computer's memory if you want to run mutiple instances of the whole program, which cannot be expected when it is built as an EXE.

• dwTerm API
  

  dwTerm provides you an API (Application Programming Interface), in which various "handlers" in your DLL can be called by dwTerm at events (including the start, the end, and the command-input), and many "functions" in dwTerm can be called by your codes in the DLL. The prototypes of these routines and the related data structures are defined in a header file written in C and should be included in compliling your DLL.

• dwTerm Script
  

  dwTerm can run the DLL by way of a script file where the DLL and input commands are specified. This is helpful if results you want to see can be achieved after many input commands.

Some DLL samples are suggested with the source codes, one of which is a plotting program helpful for visual optimization of a 2-dimensional math function, as you see in the screenshot above. Programming a DLL for dwTerm is very easy. The followings are the source codes and the screenshot of one sample, hello.dll.

#define EXPORT __declspec(dllexport) EXPORT char *dwTermH_Start (char *CmdLine, char **Title) { return "Hello!"; }