Before sending API transactions to Imagenation, you must start Imagenation and establish a conversation with it. You can start it from the Windows Explorer or Program Manager or from your client application (using a WINEXE call, for instance). To start a conversation, call DdeInitialize to initialize DDEML. Then use the DDEML DdeConnect() function with "Imagenation" for the service name and "Imaging" for the topic name.
If a different service and topic name are required, these can be configured through the Imagenation INI file, by adding the following settings.
[API]
DDE Server Name=service-name
DDE Topic Name=topic-name
When you want to end the conversation, you must terminate the Imagenation application and disconnect the conversation. To end Imagenation, use the Terminate or EndImagenation transactions. To end the conversation, use the Windows DDEML DdeDisconnect() function.
Here are some other items of note:
· You can pass only one transaction per Execute, Request, or Poke call.
· When using string parameters, remember to enclose them in double quotation marks (especially if the strings contain spaces).
· Some Imagenation transactions, such as Merge, can take a matter of minutes to process. Use asynchronous DDE calls (ones which return immediately) or set the Windows timeout variable to a large value, such as 30 minutes. If Imagenation is processing a transaction and it receives another transaction call, it will return a busy code.
To use these API calls through OLE Automation, refer to OLE Automation Help (Oleauto.hlp).
See also