Host Display Info

Availability  LightWave® 6.0
Component  Layout, Modeler
Header  lwdisplay.h

The host display global returns platform-specific information about LightWave®'s interface. This is primarily useful when you want to create a platform-dependent interface for your plug-in.

Global Call

   HostDisplayInfo *hdi;
   hdi = global( LWHOSTDISPLAYINFO_GLOBAL, GFUSE_TRANSIENT );

The global function returns a pointer to a HostDisplayInfo, or NULL if called in a non-interactive (e.g. Screamernet) context.

   typedef struct st_HostDisplayInfo {
    #ifdef _MSWIN
      HANDLE    instance;
      HWND      window;
    #endif
    #ifdef _XGL
      Display  *xsys;
      Window    window;
    #endif
    #ifdef _MACOS
      WindowPtr window;
    #endif
   } HostDisplayInfo;

The operating system #defines (_MSWIN, _XGL, _MACOS) are discussed in the section on plug-in compiling.

window

LightWave®'s main window. This is often used as the parent window of the plug-in's main window.

_MSWIN instance

Under Microsoft Windows, this is the instance handle for the LightWave® process. You won't need this very often. If you want a handle to a resource (dialog templates, icons, bitmaps) that's stored in your plug-in's .p file, you need to use your plug-in's instance handle, not LightWave®'s. See your Win32 documentation to find out how to get your instance handle using the DllMain function.

_XGL xsys

Under Unix, this is LightWave®'s window session handle.

Example

This code fragment displays everyone's favorite first message, but using the Win32 MessageBox function with LightWave®'s main window handle as the parent window.

   #include <lwserver.h>
   #include <lwdisplay.h>   /* includes windows.h under Windows */

   HostDisplayInfo *hdi;

   hdi = global( LWHOSTDISPLAYINFO_GLOBAL, GFUSE_TRANSIENT );

   if ( hdi ) {
      MessageBox( hdi->window, "Hello, world!", "My Message", MB_OK );
   }