Overview In this chapter I introduce Borland C++Builder (BCB) and explain what it is about. I also devote considerable time to explaining the purpose of this book and the philosophy behind my approach to technical writing. Technical subjects covered in this chapter include Creating a simple Multimedia RAD program that plays movies, WAV files, and MIDI files. Shutting down the BCB RAD programming tools and writing raw Windows API code instead. Creating components dynamically on the heap at runtime. Setting up event handlers (closures) dynamically at runtime. A brief introduction to using exceptions. This topic is covered in more depth in Chapter 5, "Exceptions." A brief introduction to ANSI strings. This subject is covered in more depth in Chapter 3, "C++Builder and the VCL." Using the online help. Greping through the include and source files that come with the product and with this book.
This software was done in part for a textbook on AI I ve written called _The Basis of AI_ (tentative title, subject to change but not if I get my way). For details see: http://www.mcs.com/~drt/basisofai.html
