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by giancarlostoro 899 days ago
What I really dont get is why in some cases, when it looks obvious to me that the XP UI is just some Microsoft GUI for the drivers, why Microsoft didn't consolidate those APIs into the modern UI. They own the entire run-time, I don't understand why they cannot add a translation layer.
2 comments
tadfisher 898 days ago
XP? They still have the NT 3.5 UI if you dig deep enough. Translating these is just asking for trouble when an important checkbox moves out of the frame because the original dev, in 1993, placed it with absolute coordinates. And there's no way in hell MS has access to all of these vintage drivers.
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giancarlostoro 898 days ago
The driver has to talk to the OS somehow, and they have insane amount of telemetry, might as well use it to some actual usefulness. Always allow a way to "use the old UI" with this approach, but at least then, you can have more uniformity.
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turquoisevar 898 days ago
It beats me; as you said, it would take relatively modest efforts to add a translation layer.

Especially considering that most of it already is a translation layer for the Windows Registry.

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giancarlostoro 896 days ago
Well they own the entire platform, and they know which APIs are called by drivers. I feel like its doable.
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