>George,
>
>Thank you for your interest in this subject. I totally agree, that the contents of the strucuture members (wheather pointer of value) is specific to the type of message. However, the originator of this thread did not specify the type of message in question so that's why I suggested looking at GetMessage / PeekMessage, as well as looking at the Pointers class for VFP, in case the the returned structure contained any pointers.
>
>Re passing messages between open forms; if all the forms involved belong to the same application, then, yes using a forms manager would make sense, either the forms would log themselves in and out, or the manager would poll the open forms, thus beeing aware at any moment of the status of the forms, as well as being able to reference them. However, things complicate if you need to manage forms between applications, such a form manager would require the utilization of the API functions, although, being not a seasoned API user, I would develop a DDE interface between the apps that need to communicate, or centralize the DDE calls into a DDE manager that will, in its turn, receive/send the messages from/to their senders/receivers.
>Basically, I can understand/develop the mechanics; I find it more complicated using the API tools, sometimes nowever these may be the only tools available.
>
>Sorin
>
I think that in this instance, DDE would be absolutely the right choice. Then again, DDE is simply a hook into some of these messaging functions. The reason I point this out is that many view DDE as a "dead end", which I doubt. For the us, the programmers, it removes a level of unnecessary complexity that we'd have to deal with otherwise. If we had to use messaging, we'd have to set up a series of numeric codes or deal with the API in order to retrieve data that was pointed to. In my view, DDE would be a lot more straightforward and, in turn, easier to maintain.

George