### How PMCX Works

Given the dual nature of a PMCX control, there is an easy part and a difficult part. The easy part is the manner in which your application interacts with the control. You only need to use the XxxxRegister function within your application to register the control. If the control is part of a dialog template, the control will be created as though it were a normal control. It is that simple.

The difficult part is how the control interacts with the IRE. This is a little more complicated, because you have to fill in a structure that describes the capabilities of the control to the Integrated Resource Editor, and you have to create the styles dialog.

PMCX defines a set of structures that will allow the custom control to be able to pass information between itself and the IRE. The structures are at all times controlled by the Integrated Resource Editor, which is responsible for allocating and de-allocating necessary memory for the structures. Only through a callback routine to the IRE are you allowed to reallocate one area of these structures, which contains the variable-sized control data.

Some of the structures are only used once, whereas others are required to be used many times by both the IRE and the control. The methods of using the structures within the control are defined to allow the control to access and update the elements of the structure. The best place to start is with the header that defines the structures you will use to interact with the IRE.

Control Extensions

PMCX Construction

PMCX Definition Headers
PMCX Architecture