MSLU doesn't support wininet.dll

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2006/05/19 09:31 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2006/05/19/601823.aspx

The Internet Extensions for Win32, a.k.a. WinINet.dll, has been around for a long time.

Does it support Unicode? Yes, it does -- a bunch of "W" functions, though many of them seem to convert the strings from Unicode.

Does it support Unicode on Win9x? No, it does not (as far as I know).

Does MSLU (the Microsoft Layer for Unicode on Win9x Systems) support the functions in it? No, it does not.

So imagine my surprise when I noticed the following text in the help topic in the Platform SDK for FtpPutFile (similar text in most of the other WinINet functions):

Implemented as FtpPutFileW (Unicode) and FtpPutFileA (ANSI). Note that Unicode support on Windows Me/98/95 requires Microsoft Layer for Unicode.

So just to dispell any lurking rumors, MSLU support has not been expanded to WinINet.dll and there are no plans for such an expansion.

I mean, after all, even extended support for Windows 98 and Windows Me ends on July 11th of this year!

I'll mention this to the SDK folks, hopefully this post will be obsolete soon enough....

 

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# Joel Spolsky on 19 May 2006 12:45 PM:

Yay for cut and paste documentation!

# Michael S. Kaplan on 19 May 2006 1:58 PM:

Hi Joel,

I've been thinking about it, and I am pretty sure it is worse that cut and paste, since the Win32 API function topics where an MSLU link is appropriate actually link to the MSLU topics -- which the copy/paste would have picked up!

This seems more like someone trying to answer the "Unicode" question for these functions and not knowing what to put, so looking at other topics for answers. Luckily, not being sure they are right, they did not add the link?

This is all theorizing though, the science of forensic documentation review is a relatively new field. :-)

# Yaytay on 20 May 2006 11:00 AM:

Simple solution for this problem: throw WinInet in the bin, that's where it belongs.
Or is the bin too good for it?

# Michael S. Kaplan on 20 May 2006 11:49 AM:

Well, to borrow and morph the words of Michael Everson, I am not going to be judgmental, no matter how stupid something is.....

:-)

Yuhong Bao on 4 Sep 2010 4:20 PM:

"though many of them seem to convert the strings from Unicode."

Which might mean that it already supports Win9x without MSLU anyway.

Yuhong Bao on 4 Sep 2010 4:39 PM:

I disassembled it in IDA Pro and there is also some A wrappers that convert and call the W version in wininet too, even on Win9x. In any case, all this means that the W functions in wininet.dll are already available on Win9x without MSLU, at least the IE 6 SP1 version!

Michael S. Kaplan on 4 Sep 2010 5:36 PM:

Why on earth would you still be running Win9x? :-)

Yuhong Bao on 5 Sep 2010 11:45 AM:

I am not, I was just disassembling DLLs.

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referenced by

2007/07/01 Is Simple MAPI simply Unicode?

2007/01/04 Converting a project to Unicode: Part 8 (Fitting MSLU into the mix)

2006/07/25 Our non-Unicode heritage

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