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    Copyright
    Praise for The Old New Thing
    Preface
    Acknowledgments
    About the Author
    Ch. One. Initial Forays into User Interface Design
    Ch. Two. Selected Reminiscences on Windows 95
    Ch. Three. The Secret Life of GetWindowText
    Ch. Four. The Taskbar and Notification Area
    Ch. Five. Puzzling Interface Issues
    Ch. Six. A History of the GlobalAlloc Function
    Ch. Seven. Short Topics in Windows Programming
    Ch. Eight. Window Management
    Ch. Nine. Reminiscences on Hardware
    Ch. Ten. The Inner workings of the Dialog Manager
    Ch. Eleven. General Software Issues
    Ch. Twelve. Digging into the Visual C++ Compiler
    Ch. Thirteen. Backward Compatibility
    Ch. Fourteen. Etymology and History
    What do the letters W and L stand for in WPARAM and LPARAM?
    Why was nine the maximum number of monitors in Windows 98?
    Why is a registry file called a hive?
    The management of memory for resources in 16-bit Windows
    What is the difference between HINSTANCE and HMODULE?
    What was the purpose of the hPrevInstance parameter to WinMain?
    Why is the GlobalWire function called GlobalWire?
    What was the difference between LocalAlloc and GlobalAlloc?
    What was the point of the GMEM_SHARE flag?
    Why do I sometimes see redundant casts before casting to LPARAM?
    Why do the names of the registry functions randomly end in Ex?
    What’s the difference between SHGetMalloc, SHAlloc, CoGetMalloc, and CoTaskMemAlloc?
    Why is Windows Error Reporting nicknamed Dr. Watson?
    What happened to DirectX 4?
    Why are HANDLE return values so inconsistent?
    Why do text files end in Ctrl+Z?
    Why is the line terminator CR+LF?
    TEXT vs. _TEXT vs. _T, and UNICODE vs. _UNICODE
    Why are dialog boxes initially created hidden?
    When you change the insides, nobody notices
    If FlushInstructionCache doesn’t do anything, why do you have to call it?
    If InitCommonControls doesn’t do anything, why do you have to call it?
    Why did InterlockedIncrement/Decrement only return the sign of the result?
    Why does the function WSASetLastError exist?
    Why are there broadcast-based mechanisms in Windows?
    Where did windows minimize to before the taskbar was invented?
    Why didn’t the desktop window shrink to exclude the taskbar?
    Why does the caret stop blinking when I tap the Alt key?
    What is the deal with the ES_OEMCONVERT flag?
    The story behind file system tunneling
    Why do NTFS and Explorer disagree on filename sorting?
    The Date/Time Control Panel is not a calendar
    How did Windows 95 rebase DLLs?
    What are SYSTEM_FONT and DEFAULT_GUI_FONT?
    Why do up-down controls have the arrows backward?
    A ticket to the Windows 95 launch
    Ch. Fifteen. How Window Messages are Delivered and Retrieved
    Ch. Sixteen. International Programming
    Ch. Seventeen. Security
    Ch. Eighteen. Windows 2000 and Windows XP
    Ch. Nineteen. Win32 Design Issues
    Ch. Twenty. Taxes
    Ch. Twenty-One. Silliness
    Tales of Application Compatibility
    How to Ensure that Your Program Does Not Run Under windows 95
    Index
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    Chapter Fourteen. Etymology and History > Why is Windows Error Reporting nickna...

    Why is Windows Error Reporting nicknamed Dr. Watson?

    THE NICKNAME FOR the feature known as Windows Error Reporting is Dr. Watson. Where did that name come from?

    As you have probably guessed, the name Dr. Watson was inspired by the character of Dr. Watson, the assistant to Sherlock Holmes in the stories by Arthur Conan Doyle.


      

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