Implement dispatch variant marshalling.

[wine/multimedia.git] / documentation / architecture.sgml

  <chapter id="architecture">
    <title>Overview</title>
    <para>Brief overview of Wine's architecture...</para>

    <sect1 id="basic-overview">
      <title>Basic Overview</title>

      <para>
        Written by &name-ove-kaaven; <email>&email-ove-kaaven;</email>
      </para>

      <para>
        With the fundamental architecture of Wine stabilizing, and
        people starting to think that we might soon be ready to
        actually release this thing, it may be time to take a look at
        how Wine actually works and operates.
      </para>

      <sect2>
        <title>Wine Overview</title>
        <para>
          Wine is often used as a recursive acronym, standing for
          "Wine Is Not an Emulator". Sometimes it is also known to be
          used for "Windows Emulator". In a way, both meanings are
          correct, only seen from different perspectives. The first
          meaning says that Wine is not a virtual machine, it does not
          emulate a CPU, and you are not supposed to install 
          Windows nor any Windows device drivers on top of it; rather,
          Wine is an implementation of the Windows API, and can be
          used as a library to port Windows applications to Unix. The
          second meaning, obviously, is that to Windows binaries
          (<filename>.exe</filename> files), Wine does look like
          Windows, and emulates its behaviour and quirks rather
          closely.
        </para>
        <note>
          <title>Note</title>
          <para>
            The "Emulator" perspective should not be thought of as if
            Wine is a typical inefficient emulation layer that means
            Wine can't be anything but slow - the faithfulness to the
            badly designed Windows API may of course impose a minor
            overhead in some cases, but this is both balanced out by
            the higher efficiency of the Unix platforms Wine runs on,
            and that other possible abstraction libraries (like Motif,
            GTK+, CORBA, etc) has a runtime overhead typically
            comparable to Wine's.
          </para>
        </note>
      </sect2>

      <sect2>
        <title>Win16 and Win32</title>
        <para>
          Win16 and Win32 applications have different requirements;
          for example, Win16 apps expect cooperative multitasking
          among themselves, and to exist in the same address space,
          while Win32 apps expect the complete opposite, i.e.
          preemptive multitasking, and separate address spaces.
        </para>
        <para>
          Wine now deals with this issue by launching a separate Wine
          process for each Win32 process, but not for Win16 tasks.
          Win16 tasks are now run as different intersynchronized
          threads in the same Wine process; this Wine process is
          commonly known as a <firstterm>WOW</firstterm> process,
          referring to a similar mechanism used by Windows NT.
          Synchronization between the Win16 tasks running in the WOW
          process is normally done through the Win16 mutex - whenever
          one of them is running, it holds the Win16 mutex, keeping
          the others from running. When the task wishes to let the
          other tasks run, the thread releases the Win16 mutex, and
          one of the waiting threads will then acquire it and let its
          task run.
        </para>
      </sect2>

      <sect2>
        <title>The Wine server</title>
        <para>
          The Wine server is among the most confusing concepts in Wine.
          What is its function in Wine? Well, to be brief, it provides
          Inter-Process Communication (IPC), synchronization, and
          process/thread management. When the wineserver launches, it
          creates a Unix socket for the current host based on (see below)
          your home directory's <filename>.wine</filename> subdirectory (or
          wherever the <constant>WINEPREFIX</constant> environment
          variable points) - all Wine processes launched later
          connects to the wineserver using this socket. (If a
          wineserver was not already running, the first Wine process
          will start up the wineserver in auto-terminate mode (i.e.
          the wineserver will then terminate itself once the last Wine
          process has terminated).)
        </para>
        <para>
          In earlier versions of Wine the master socket mentioned
          above was actually created in the configuration directory;
          either your home directory's <filename>/wine</filename> 
          subdirectory or wherever the <constant>WINEPREFIX</constant>
          environment variable points>.  Since that might not be possible
          the socket is actually created within the <filename>/tmp</filename>
          directory with a name that reflects the configuration directory.
          This means that there can actually be several separate copies of
          the wineserver running; one per combination of user and
          configuration directory.  Note that you should not have several
          users using the same configuration directory at the same time;
          they will have different copies of the wineserver running and
          this could well lead to problems with the registry information
          that they are sharing.
        </para>
        <para>
          Every thread in each Wine process has its own request
          buffer, which is shared with the wineserver. When a thread
          needs to synchronize or communicate with any other thread or
          process, it fills out its request buffer, then writes a
          command code through the socket. The wineserver handles the
          command as appropriate, while the client thread waits for a
          reply. In some cases, like with the various
          <function>WaitFor</function> synchronization primitives, the
          server handles it by marking the client thread as waiting
          and does not send it a reply before the wait condition has
          been satisfied.
        </para>
        <para>
          The wineserver itself is a single and separate process and
          does not have its own threading - instead, it is built on
          top of a large <function>poll()</function> loop that alerts
          the wineserver whenever anything happens, such as a client
          having sent a command, or a wait condition having been satisfied.
          There is thus no danger of race conditions inside the
          wineserver itself - it is often called upon to do operations
          that look completely atomic to its clients.
        </para>
        <para>
          Because the wineserver needs to manage processes, threads,
          shared handles, synchronization, and any related issues, all
          the clients' Win32 objects are also managed by the
          wineserver, and the clients must send requests to the
          wineserver whenever they need to know any Win32 object
          handle's associated Unix file descriptor (in which case the
          wineserver duplicates the file descriptor, transmits it to
          the client, and leaves it to the client to close the duplicate
          when the client has finished with it).
        </para>
      </sect2>

      <sect2>
        <title>The Service Thread</title>
        <para>
          The Wine server cannot do everything that needs to be done
          behind the application's back, considering that it's not
          threaded (so cannot do anything that would block or take any
          significant amount of time), nor does it share the address
          space of its client threads. Thus, a special event loop also
          exists in each Win32 process' own address space, but handled
          like one of the process' own threads. This special thread is
          called the <firstterm>service thread</firstterm>, and does
          things that it wouldn't be appropriate for the wineserver to
          do. For example, it can call the application's asynchronous
          system timer callbacks every time a timer event is signalled
          (the wineserver handles the signalling, of course).
        </para>
        <para>
          One important function of the service thread is to support
          the X11 driver's event loop. Whenever an event arrives from
          the X server, the service thread wakes up and sees the
          event, processes it, and posts messages into the
          application's message queues as appropriate. But this
          function is not unique - any number of Wine core components
          can install their own handlers into the service thread as
          necessary, whenever they need to do something independent of
          the application's own event loop. (At the moment, this
          includes, but is not limited to, multimedia timers, serial
          comms, and winsock async selects.)
        </para>
        <para>
          The implementation of the service thread is in
          <filename>scheduler/services.c</filename>.
        </para>
      </sect2>

      <sect2>
        <title>Relays, Thunks, and DLL descriptors</title>
        <para>
          Loading a Windows binary into memory isn't that hard by
          itself, the hard part is all those various DLLs and entry
          points it imports and expects to be there and function as
          expected; this is, obviously, what the entire Wine
          implementation is all about. Wine contains a range of DLL
          implementations. Each of the implemented (or
          half-implemented) DLLs (which can be found in the
          <filename>dlls/</filename> directory) need to make
          themselves known to the Wine core through a DLL descriptor.
          These descriptors point to such things as the DLL's
          resources and the entry point table.
        </para>
        <para>
          The DLL descriptor and entry point table is generated by the
          <command>winebuild</command> tool (previously just named
          <command>build</command>), taking DLL specification files
          with the extension <filename>.spec</filename> as input. The
          output file contains a global constructor that automatically
          registers the DLL's descriptor with the Wine core at
          runtime.
        </para>
        <para>
          Once an application module wants to import a DLL, Wine will
          look through its list of registered DLLs (if it's not
          registered, it will look for it on disk). (Failing that, it
          will look for a real Windows <filename>.DLL</filename> file
          to use, and look through its imports, etc.) To resolve the
          module's imports, Wine looks through the entry point table
          and finds if it's defined there. (If not, it'll emit the
          error "No handler for ...", which, if the application called
          the entry point, is a fatal error.)
        </para>
        <para>
          Since Wine is 32-bit code itself, and if the compiler
          supports Windows' calling convention, <type>stdcall</type>
          (<command>gcc</command> does), Wine can resolve imports into
          Win32 code by substituting the addresses of the Wine
          handlers directly without any thunking layer in between.
          This eliminates the overhead most people associate with
          "emulation", and is what the applications expect anyway.
        </para>
        <para>
          However, if the user specified <parameter>--debugmsg
            +relay</parameter>, a thunk layer is inserted between the
          application imports and the Wine handlers; this layer is
          known as "relay" because all it does is print out the
          arguments/return values (by using the argument lists in the
          DLL descriptor's entry point table), then pass the call on,
          but it's invaluable for debugging misbehaving calls into
          Wine code. A similar mechanism also exists between Windows
          DLLs - Wine can optionally insert thunk layers between them,
          by using <parameter>--debugmsg +snoop</parameter>, but since
          no DLL descriptor information exists for non-Wine DLLs, this
          is less reliable and may lead to crashes.
        </para>
        <para>
          For Win16 code, there is no way around thunking - Wine needs
          to relay between 16-bit and 32-bit code. These thunks switch
          between the app's 16-bit stack and Wine's 32-bit stack,
          copies and converts arguments as appropriate, and handles
          the Win16 mutex. Suffice to say that the kind of intricate
          stack content juggling this results in, is not exactly
          suitable study material for beginners.
        </para>
      </sect2>

      <sect2>
        <title>Core and non-core DLLs</title>

<!-- FIXME: Should do this without the .jpg (AJ)
        <para>
          This slide (by Marcus Meissner of Caldera Systems, shown at
          the Comdex 99) shows how Wine is meant to fit into the
          Windows DLL model.
          <mediaobject>
            <imageobject>
              <imagedata fileref="arch-layout.jpg" format="jpg">
            </imageobject>
          </mediaobject>
        </para>
FIXME -->

        <para>
          Wine must at least completely replace the "Big Three" DLLs
          (KERNEL/KERNEL32, GDI/GDI32, and USER/USER32), which all
          other DLLs are layered on top of. But since Wine is (for
          various reasons) leaning towards the NT way of implementing
          things, the NTDLL is another core DLL to be implemented in
          Wine, and many KERNEL32 and ADVAPI32 features will be
          implemented through the NTDLL. The wineserver and the
          service thread provide the backbone for the implementation
          of these core DLLs, and integration with the X11 driver
          (which provides GDI/GDI32 and USER/USER32 functionality
          along with the Windows standard controls). All non-core
          DLLs, on the other hand, are expected to only use routines
          exported by other DLLs (and none of these backbone services
          directly), to keep the code base as tidy as possible. An
          example of this is COMCTL32 (Common Controls), which should
          only use standard GDI32- and USER32-exported routines.
        </para>
      </sect2>
    </sect1>

    <sect1 id="module-overview">
      <title>Module Overview</title>

      <para>
        written by (???)
      </para>
      <para>
        (Extracted from <filename>wine/documentation/internals</filename>)
      </para>

      <sect2>
        <title>KERNEL Module</title>

        <para>Needs some content...</para>
      </sect2>

      <sect2>
        <title>GDI Module</title>

        <sect3>
          <title>X Windows System interface</title>

          <para>
            The X libraries used to implement X clients (such as Wine)
            do not work properly if multiple threads access the same
            display concurrently. It is possible to compile the X
            libraries to perform their own synchronization (initiated
            by calling <function>XInitThreads()</function>). However,
            Wine does not use this approach. Instead Wine performs its
            own synchronization by putting a wrapper around every X
            call that is used. This wrapper protects library access
            with a critical section, and also arranges things so that
            X libraries compiled without <option>-D_REENTRANT</option>
            (eg. with global <varname>errno</varname> variable) will
            work with Wine.
          </para>
          <para>
            To make this scheme work, all calls to X must use the
            proper wrapper functions (or do their own synchronization
            that is compatible with the wrappers). The wrapper for a
            function <function>X...()</function> is calles
            <function>TSX...()</function> (for "Thread Safe X ...").
            So for example, instead of calling
            <function>XOpenDisplay()</function> in the code,
            <function>TSXOpenDisplay()</function> must be used.
            Likewise, X header files that contain function prototypes
            are wrapped, so that eg. <filename>"ts_xutil.h"</filename>
            must be included rather than
            <filename>&lt;X11/Xutil.h&gt;</filename>. It is important
            that this scheme is used everywhere to avoid the
            introduction of nondeterministic and hard-to-find errors
            in Wine.
          </para>
          <para>
            The code for the thread safe X wrappers is contained in
            the <filename>tsx11/</filename> directory and in
            <filename>include/ts*.h</filename>. To use a new (ie. not
            previously used) X function in Wine, a new wrapper must be
            created. The wrappers are generated (semi-)automatically
            from the X11R6 includes using the
            <filename>tools/make_X11wrappers</filename> perl script.
            In simple cases it should be enough to add the name of the
            new function to the list in
            <filename>tsx11/X11_calls</filename>; if this does not
            work the wrapper must be added manually to the
            <filename>make_X11wrappers</filename> script. See comments
            in <filename>tsx11/X11_calls</filename> and
            <filename>tools/make_X11wrappers</filename> for further
            details.
          </para>
        </sect3>
      </sect2>

      <sect2>
        <title>USER Module</title>

        <para>
          USER implements windowing and messaging subsystems. It also
          contains code for common controls and for other
          miscellaneous  stuff (rectangles, clipboard, WNet, etc).
          Wine USER code is  located in <filename>windows/</filename>,
          <filename>controls/</filename>, and
          <filename>misc/</filename> directories.
        </para>

        <sect3>
          <title>Windowing subsystem</title>

          <para><filename>windows/win.c</filename></para>
          <para><filename>windows/winpos.c</filename></para>
          <para>
            Windows are arranged into parent/child hierarchy with one
            common ancestor for all windows (desktop window). Each
            window structure contains a pointer to the immediate
            ancestor (parent window if <constant>WS_CHILD</constant>
            style bit is set), a pointer to the sibling (returned by
            <function>GetWindow(..., GW_NEXT)</function>), a pointer
            to the owner  window (set only for popup window if it was
            created with valid  <varname>hwndParent</varname>
            parameter), and a pointer to the first child window
            (<function>GetWindow(.., GW_CHILD)</function>). All popup
            and non-child windows are therefore placed in the first
            level of this hierarchy and their ancestor link
            (<varname>wnd-&gt;parent</varname>) points to the desktop
            window.
          </para>
          <screen>
   Desktop window                       - root window
    |     \      `-.
    |      \        `-.
   popup -&gt; wnd1  -&gt;  wnd2                - top level windows    
    |       \   `-.      `-.
    |        \     `-.      `-.
   child1  child2 -&gt; child3  child4     - child windows
          </screen>
          <para>
            Horizontal arrows denote sibling relationship, vertical
            lines - ancestor/child. To summarize, all windows with the
            same immediate ancestor are sibling windows, all windows
            which do not have desktop as their immediate ancestor are
            child windows. Popup windows behave as topmost top-level
            windows unless they are owned. In this case the only
            requirement is that they must precede their owners in the
            top-level sibling list (they are not topmost). Child
            windows are confined to the client area of their parent
            windows (client area is where window gets to do its own
            drawing, non-client area consists of caption, menu,
            borders, intrinsic scrollbars, and
            minimize/maximize/close/help buttons). 
          </para>
          <para>
            Another fairly important concept is
            <firstterm>z-order</firstterm>. It is derived from the
            ancestor/child hierarchy and is used to determine
            "above/below" relationship. For instance, in the example
            above, z-order is
          </para>
          <screen>
child1-&gt;popup-&gt;child2-&gt;child3-&gt;wnd1-&gt;child4-&gt;wnd2-&gt;desktop.
          </screen>
          <para>
            Current  active window ("foreground window" in Win32) is
            moved to the front of z-order unless its top-level
            ancestor owns popup windows.
          </para>
          <para>
            All these issues are dealt with (or supposed to be) in
            <filename>windows/winpos.c</filename> with
            <function>SetWindowPos()</function> being the primary
            interface to the window manager.
          </para>
          <para>
            Wine specifics: in default and managed mode each top-level
            window gets its own X counterpart with desktop window
            being basically a fake stub. In desktop mode, however,
            only desktop window has an X window associated with it.
            Also, <function>SetWindowPos()</function> should
            eventually be implemented via
            <function>Begin/End/DeferWindowPos()</function> calls and
            not the other way around.
          </para>

          <sect4>
            <title>Visible region, clipping region and update region</title>

            <para><filename>windows/dce.c</filename></para>
            <para><filename>windows/winpos.c</filename></para>
            <para><filename>windows/painting.c</filename></para>

            <screen>
    ________________________
   |_________               |  A and B are child windows of C
   |    A    |______        | 
   |         |      |       |
   |---------'      |       |
   |   |      B     |       |
   |   |            |       |
   |   `------------'       |
   |                   C    |
   `------------------------'
            </screen>
            <para>
              Visible region determines which part of the window is
              not obscured by other windows. If a window has the
              <constant>WS_CLIPCHILDREN</constant> style then all
              areas below its children are considered invisible.
              Similarly, if the <constant>WS_CLIPSIBLINGS</constant>
              bit is in effect then all areas obscured by its siblings
              are invisible. Child windows are always clipped by the
              boundaries of their parent windows.
            </para>
            <para>
              B has a <constant>WS_CLIPSIBLINGS</constant> style:
            </para>
            <screen>
   .          ______ 
   :         |      |
   |   ,-----'      |
   |   |      B     | - visible region of B
   |   |            |
   :   `------------'
            </screen>
            <para>
              When the program requests a <firstterm>display
                context</firstterm> (DC) for a window it  can specify
              an optional clipping region that further restricts the
              area where the graphics output can appear. This area is
              calculated as an intersection of the visible region and
              a clipping region. 
            </para>
            <para>
              Program asked for a DC with a clipping region:
            </para>
            <screen>
          ______
      ,--|--.   |     .    ,--. 
   ,--+--'  |   |     :   _:  |
   |  |   B |   |  =&gt; |  |    | - DC region where the painting will
   |  |     |   |     |  |    |   be visible
   `--|-----|---'     :  `----'
      `-----'
            </screen>
            <para>
              When the window manager detects that some part of the window
              became visible it adds this area to the update region of this
              window and then generates <constant>WM_ERASEBKGND</constant> and
              <constant>WM_PAINT</constant> messages.  In addition,
              <constant>WM_NCPAINT</constant> message is sent when the
              uncovered area  intersects a nonclient part of the window.
              Application must reply to the <constant>WM_PAINT</constant>
              message by calling the
              <function>BeginPaint()</function>/<function>EndPaint()</function>
              pair of functions. <function>BeginPaint()</function> returns a DC
              that uses accumulated update region as a clipping region. This
              operation cleans up invalidated area and the window will not
              receive another <constant>WM_PAINT</constant> until the window
              manager creates a new update region.
            </para>
            <para>
              A was moved to the left:
            </para>
            <screen>
    ________________________       ...          / C update region
   |______                  |     :      .___ /
   | A    |_________        |  =&gt; |   ...|___|..
   |      |         |       |     |   :  |   |
   |------'         |       |     |   :  '---' 
   |   |      B     |       |     |   :      \
   |   |            |       |     :            \
   |   `------------'       |                    B update region
   |                   C    |
   `------------------------'
            </screen>
            <para>
              Windows maintains a display context cache consisting of
              entries that include the DC itself, the window to which
              it belongs, and an optional clipping region (visible
              region is stored in the DC itself). When an API call
              changes the state of the window tree, window manager has
              to go through the DC cache to recalculate visible
              regions for entries whose windows were involved in the
              operation. DC entries (DCE) can be either private to the
              window, or private to the window class, or shared
              between all windows (Windows 3.1 limits the number of
              shared DCEs to 5).
            </para>
          </sect4>
        </sect3>

        <sect3>
          <title>Messaging subsystem</title>

          <para><filename>windows/queue.c</filename></para>
          <para><filename>windows/message.c</filename></para>

          <para>
            Each Windows task/thread has its own message queue - this
            is where it gets messages from. Messages can be:
            <orderedlist>
              <listitem>
                <para>
                  generated on the fly (<constant>WM_PAINT</constant>,
                  <constant>WM_NCPAINT</constant>,
                  <constant>WM_TIMER</constant>)
                </para>
              </listitem>
              <listitem>
                <para>
                  created by the system (hardware messages)
                </para>
              </listitem>
              <listitem>
                <para>
                  posted by other tasks/threads (<function>PostMessage</function>)
                </para>
              </listitem>
              <listitem>
                <para>
                  sent by other tasks/threads (<function>SendMessage</function>)
                </para>
              </listitem>
            </orderedlist>
          </para>
          <para>
            Message priority:
          </para>
          <para>
            First the system looks for sent messages, then for posted
            messages, then for hardware messages, then it checks if
            the queue has the "dirty window" bit set, and, finally, it
            checks for expired timers. See
            <filename>windows/message.c</filename>.
          </para>
          <para>
            From all these different types of messages, only posted
            messages go directly into the private message queue.
            System messages (even in Win95) are first collected in the
            system message queue and then they either sit there until
            <function>Get/PeekMessage</function> gets to process them
            or, as in Win95, if system queue is getting clobbered, a
            special thread ("raw input thread") assigns them to the
            private queues. Sent messages are queued separately and
            the sender sleeps until it gets a reply. Special messages
            are generated on the fly depending on the window/queue
            state. If the window update region is not empty, the
            system sets the <constant>QS_PAINT</constant> bit in the
            owning queue and eventually this window receives a
            <constant>WM_PAINT</constant> message
            (<constant>WM_NCPAINT</constant> too if the update region
            intersects with the non-client area). A timer event is
            raised when one of the queue timers expire. Depending on
            the timer parameters <function>DispatchMessage</function>
            either calls the callback function or the window
            procedure. If there are no messages pending the
            task/thread sleeps until messages appear.
          </para>
          <para>
            There are several tricky moments (open for discussion) - 
          </para>

          <itemizedlist>
            <listitem>
              <para>
                System message order has to be honored and messages
                should be processed within correct task/thread
                context. Therefore when <function>Get/PeekMessage</function> encounters
                unassigned system message and this message appears not
                to be for the current task/thread it should either
                skip it (or get rid of it by moving it into the
                private message queue of the target task/thread -
                Win95, AFAIK) and look further or roll back and then
                yield until this message gets processed when system
                switches to the correct context (Win16). In the first
                case we lose correct message ordering, in the second
                case we have the infamous synchronous system message
                queue. Here is a post to one of the OS/2 newsgroup I
                found to be relevant:
              </para>
              <blockquote>
                <attribution>by David Charlap</attribution>
                <para>
                  " Here's the problem in a nutshell, and there is no
                  good solution. Every possible solution creates a
                  different problem.
                </para>
                <para>
                  With a windowing system, events can go to many
                  different windows. Most are sent by applications or
                  by the OS when things relating to that window happen
                  (like repainting, timers, etc.)
                </para>
                <para>
                  Mouse input events go to the window you click on
                  (unless some window captures the mouse).
                </para>
                <para>
                  So far, no problem.  Whenever an event happens, you
                  put a message on the target window's message queue.
                  Every process has a message queue.  If the process
                  queue fills up, the messages back up onto the system
                  queue.
                </para>
                <para>
                  This is the first cause of apps hanging the GUI.  If
                  an app doesn't handle messages and they back up into
                  the system queue, other apps can't get any more
                  messages.  The reason is that the next message in
                  line can't go anywhere, and the system won't skip
                  over it.
                </para>
                <para>
                  This can be fixed by making apps have bigger private
                  message queues. The SIQ fix does this.  PMQSIZE does
                  this for systems without the SIQ fix.  Applications
                  can also request large queues on their own.
                </para>
                <para>
                  Another source of the problem, however, happens when
                  you include keyboard events.  When you press a key,
                  there's no easy way to know what window the
                  keystroke message should be delivered to.
                </para>
                <para>
                  Most windowing systems use a concept known as
                  "focus".  The window with focus gets all incoming
                  keyboard messages.  Focus can be changed from window
                  to window by apps or by users clicking on windows.
                </para>
                <para>
                  This is the second source of the problem.  Suppose
                  window A has focus. You click on window B and start
                  typing before the window gets focus. Where should
                  the keystrokes go?  On the one hand, they should go
                  to A until the focus actually changes to B.  On the
                  other hand, you probably want the keystrokes to go
                  to B, since you clicked there first.
                </para>
                <para>
                  OS/2's solution is that when a focus-changing event
                  happens (like clicking on a window), OS/2 holds all
                  messages in the system queue until the focus change
                  actually happens.  This way, subsequent keystrokes
                  go to the window you clicked on, even if it takes a
                  while for that window to get focus.
                </para>
                <para>
                  The downside is that if the window takes a real long
                  time to get focus (maybe it's not handling events,
                  or maybe the window losing focus isn't handling
                  events), everything backs up in the system queue and
                  the system appears hung.
                </para>
                <para>
                  There are a few solutions to this problem.
                </para>
                <para>
                  One is to make focus policy asynchronous.  That is,
                  focus changing has absolutely nothing to do with the
                  keyboard.  If you click on a window and start typing
                  before the focus actually changes, the keystrokes go
                  to the first window until focus changes, then they
                  go to the second. This is what X-windows does.
                </para>
                <para>
                  Another is what NT does.  When focus changes,
                  keyboard events are held in the system message
                  queue, but other events are allowed through. This is
                  "asynchronous" because the messages in the system
                  queue are delivered to the application queues in a
                  different order from that with which they were
                  posted.  If a bad app won't handle the "lose focus"
                  message, it's of no consequence - the app receiving
                  focus will get its "gain focus" message, and the
                  keystrokes will go to it.
                </para>
                <para>
                  The NT solution also takes care of the application
                  queue filling up problem.  Since the system delivers
                  messages asynchronously, messages waiting in the
                  system queue will just sit there and the rest of the
                  messages will be delivered to their apps.
                </para>
                <para>
                  The OS/2 SIQ solution is this:  When a
                  focus-changing event happens, in addition to
                  blocking further messages from the application
                  queues, a timer is started.  When the timer goes
                  off, if the focus change has not yet happened, the
                  bad app has its focus taken away and all messages
                  targeted at that window are skipped.  When the bad
                  app finally handles the focus change message, OS/2
                  will detect this and stop skipping its messages.
                </para>

                <para>
                  As for the pros and cons:
                </para>
                <para>
                  The X-windows solution is probably the easiest.  The
                  problem is that users generally don't like having to
                  wait for the focus to change before they start
                  typing.  On many occasions, you can type and the
                  characters end up in the wrong window because
                  something (usually heavy system load) is preventing
                  the focus change from happening in a timely manner.
                </para>
                <para>
                  The NT solution seems pretty nice, but making the
                  system message queue asynchronous can cause similar
                  problems to the X-windows problem. Since messages
                  can be delivered out of order, programs must not
                  assume that two messages posted in a particular
                  order will be delivered in that same order.  This
                  can break legacy apps, but since Win32 always had an
                  asynchronous queue, it is fair to simply tell app
                  designers "don't do that".  It's harder to tell app
                  designers something like that on OS/2 - they'll
                  complain "you changed the rules and our apps are
                  breaking."
                </para>
                <para>
                  The OS/2 solution's problem is that nothing happens
                  until you try to change window focus, and then wait
                  for the timeout.  Until then, the bad app is not
                  detected and nothing is done."
                </para>
              </blockquote>
            </listitem>

            <listitem>
              <para>
                Intertask/interthread
                <function>SendMessage</function>. The system has to
                inform the target queue about the forthcoming message,
                then it has to carry out the context switch and wait
                until the result is available.  Win16 stores necessary
                parameters in the queue structure and then calls
                <function>DirectedYield()</function> function.
                However, in Win32 there could be  several messages
                pending sent by preemptively executing threads, and in
                this case <function>SendMessage</function> has to
                build some sort of message queue for sent messages.
                Another issue is what to do with messages sent to the
                sender when it is blocked inside its own
                <function>SendMessage</function>. 
              </para>
            </listitem>
          </itemizedlist>
        </sect3>
      </sect2>
    </sect1>

    <sect1 id="arch-dlls">
      <title>Wine/Windows DLLs</title>

      <para>
        Based upon various messages on wine-devel especially by Ulrich
        Weigand. Adapted by Michele Petrovski and Klaas van Gend.
      </para>

      <para>
        (Extracted from <filename>wine/documentation/dlls</filename>)
      </para>

      <para>
        This document mainly deals with the status of current DLL
        support by Wine.  The Wine ini file currently supports
        settings to change the load order of DLLs.  The load order
        depends on several issues, which results in different settings
        for various DLLs.
      </para>

      <sect2>
        <title>Pros of Native DLLs</title>

        <para>
          Native DLLs of course guarantee 100% compatibility for
          routines they implement. For example, using the native USER
          DLL would maintain a virtually perfect and Windows 95-like
          look for window borders, dialog controls, and so on. Using
          the built-in Wine version of this library, on the other
          hand, would produce a display that does not precisely mimic
          that of Windows 95.  Such subtle differences can be
          engendered in other important DLLs, such as the common
          controls library COMMCTRL or the common dialogs library
          COMMDLG, when built-in Wine DLLs outrank other types in load
          order.
        </para>
        <para>
          More significant, less aesthetically-oriented problems can
          result if the built-in Wine version of the SHELL DLL is
          loaded before the native version of this library. SHELL
          contains routines such as those used by installer utilities
          to create desktop shortcuts. Some installers might fail when
          using Wine's built-in SHELL.
        </para>
      </sect2>

      <sect2>
        <title>Cons of Native DLLs</title>

        <para>
          Not every application performs better under native DLLs. If
          a library tries to access features of the rest of the system
          that are not fully implemented in Wine, the native DLL might
          work much worse than the corresponding built-in one, if at
          all. For example, the native Windows GDI library must be
          paired with a Windows display driver, which of course is not
          present under Intel Unix and Wine.
        </para>
        <para>
          Finally, occasionally built-in Wine DLLs implement more
          features than the corresponding native Windows DLLs.
          Probably the most important example of such behavior is the
          integration of Wine with X provided by Wine's built-in USER
          DLL. Should the native Windows USER library take load-order
          precedence, such features as the ability to use the
          clipboard or drag-and-drop between Wine windows and X
          windows will be lost.
        </para>
      </sect2>

      <sect2>
        <title>Deciding Between Native and Built-In DLLs</title>

        <para>
          Clearly, there is no one rule-of-thumb regarding which
          load-order to use. So, you must become familiar with:
        </para>

        <itemizedlist>
          <listitem>
            <para>
              what specific DLLs do
            </para>
          </listitem>
          <listitem>
            <para>
              which other DLLs or features a given library interacts with
            </para>
          </listitem>
        </itemizedlist>
        <para>
          and use this information to make a case-by-case decision.
        </para>
      </sect2>

      <sect2>
        <title>Load Order for DLLs</title>

        <para>
          Using the DLL sections from the wine configuration file, the
          load order can be tweaked to a high degree. In general it is
          advised not to change the settings of the configuration
          file. The default configuration specifies the right load
          order for the most important DLLs.
        </para>
        <para>
          The default load order follows this algorithm: for all DLLs
          which have a fully-functional Wine implementation, or where
          the native DLL is known not to work, the built-in library
          will be loaded first. In all other cases, the native DLL
          takes load-order precedence.
        </para>
        <para>
          The <varname>DefaultLoadOrder</varname> from the
          [DllDefaults] section specifies for all DLLs which version
          to try first. See manpage for explanation of the arguments.
        </para>
        <para>
          The [DllOverrides] section deals with DLLs, which need a
          different-from-default treatment. 
        </para>
        <para>
          The [DllPairs] section is for DLLs, which must be loaded in
          pairs. In general, these are DLLs for either 16-bit or
          32-bit applications. In most cases in Windows, the 32-bit
          version cannot be used without its 16-bit counterpart. For
          Wine, it is customary that the 16-bit implementations rely
          on the 32-bit implementations and cast the results back to
          16-bit arguments. Changing anything in this section is bound
          to result in errors.
        </para>
        <para>
          For the future, the Wine implementation of Windows DLL seems
          to head towards unifying the 16 and 32 bit DLLs wherever
          possible, resulting in larger DLLs.  They are stored in the
          <filename>dlls/</filename> subdirectory using the 16-bit
          name.  For large DLLs, a split might be discussed.
        </para>
      </sect2>

      <sect2>
        <title>Understanding What DLLs Do</title>

        <para>
          The following list briefly describes each of the DLLs
          commonly found in Windows whose load order may be modified
          during the configuration and compilation of Wine.
        </para>
        <para>
          (See also <filename>./DEVELOPER-HINTS</filename> or the
          <filename>dlls/</filename> subdirectory to see which DLLs
          are currently being rewritten for Wine)
        </para>

<!-- FIXME: Should convert this table into a VariableList element -->
        <screen>
ADVAPI32.DLL:      32-bit application advanced programming interfaces
                   like crypto, systeminfo, security and event logging
AVIFILE.DLL:       32-bit application programming interfaces for the
                   Audio Video Interleave (AVI) Windows-specific
                   Microsoft audio-video standard
COMMCTRL.DLL:      16-bit common controls
COMCTL32.DLL:      32-bit common controls
COMDLG32.DLL:      32-bit common dialogs
COMMDLG.DLL:       16-bit common dialogs
COMPOBJ.DLL:       OLE 16- and 32-bit compatibility libraries
CRTDLL.DLL:        Microsoft C runtime
DCIMAN.DLL:        16-bit
DCIMAN32.DLL:      32-bit display controls
DDEML.DLL:         DDE messaging
D3D*.DLL           DirectX/Direct3D drawing libraries
DDRAW.DLL:         DirectX drawing libraries
DINPUT.DLL:        DirectX input libraries
DISPLAY.DLL:       Display libraries
DPLAY.DLL, DPLAYX.DLL:  DirectX playback libraries
DSOUND.DLL:        DirectX audio libraries
GDI.DLL:           16-bit graphics driver interface
GDI32.DLL:         32-bit graphics driver interface
IMAGEHLP.DLL:      32-bit IMM API helper libraries (for PE-executables)
IMM32.DLL:         32-bit IMM API
IMGUTIL.DLL:       
KERNEL32.DLL       32-bit kernel DLL
KEYBOARD.DLL:      Keyboard drivers
LZ32.DLL:          32-bit Lempel-Ziv or LZ file compression
                   used by the installshield installers (???).
LZEXPAND.DLL:      LZ file expansion; needed for Windows Setup
MMSYSTEM.DLL:      Core of the Windows multimedia system
MOUSE.DLL:         Mouse drivers
MPR.DLL:           32-bit Windows network interface
MSACM.DLL:         Core of the Addressed Call Mode or ACM system
MSACM32.DLL:       Core of the 32-bit ACM system
                   Audio Compression Manager ???
MSNET32.DLL        32-bit network APIs
MSVFW32.DLL:       32-bit Windows video system
MSVIDEO.DLL:       16-bit Windows video system
OLE2.DLL:          OLE 2.0 libraries
OLE32.DLL:         32-bit OLE 2.0 components
OLE2CONV.DLL:      Import filter for graphics files
OLE2DISP.DLL, OLE2NLS.DLL: OLE 2.1 16- and 32-bit interoperability
OLE2PROX.DLL:      Proxy server for OLE 2.0
OLE2THK.DLL:       Thunking for OLE 2.0
OLEAUT32.DLL       32-bit OLE 2.0 automation
OLECLI.DLL:        16-bit OLE client
OLECLI32.DLL:      32-bit OLE client
OLEDLG.DLL:        OLE 2.0 user interface support
OLESVR.DLL:        16-bit OLE server libraries
OLESVR32.DLL:      32-bit OLE server libraries
PSAPI.DLL:         Proces Status API libraries
RASAPI16.DLL:      16-bit Remote Access Services libraries
RASAPI32.DLL:      32-bit Remote Access Services libraries
SHELL.DLL:         16-bit Windows shell used by Setup
SHELL32.DLL:       32-bit Windows shell (COM object?)
TAPI/TAPI32/TAPIADDR:  Telephone API (for Modems)
W32SKRNL:          Win32s Kernel ? (not in use for Win95 and up!)
WIN32S16.DLL:      Application compatibility for Win32s
WIN87EM.DLL:       80387 math-emulation libraries
WINASPI.DLL:       Advanced SCSI Peripheral Interface or ASPI libraries
WINDEBUG.DLL       Windows debugger
WINMM.DLL:         Libraries for multimedia thunking
WING.DLL:          Libraries required to "draw" graphics
WINSOCK.DLL:       Sockets APIs
WINSPOOL.DLL:      Print spooler libraries
WNASPI32.DLL:      32-bit ASPI libraries
WSOCK32.DLL:       32-bit sockets APIs
        </screen>
      </sect2>
    </sect1>
  </chapter>

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