Accessing Windows APIs

[Atlas]

Hi,
I need some baby steps here. How can I make my java program access the Windows APIs???

Do I have to resort to JNI? Or is there something more direct?

I have never tried this before. Would appreciate some information on this.

[Atlas]

Anybody?

[mikeBarr81]

Well since Java is platform independent i'd assume JNI is the only way. I've never used it though, so I don't know how you would do that.

[Atlas]

Thanks for the response Mike.

Though I did have a feeling that Windows version of the JVM does provide a way to access some of the APIs exposed by windows to be contacted directly by java. Yes, that would take away the platform-independence of Java, but the same happens for many Swings components.

To take an example, if I want my java program to output some contents to a windows printer spooler, how do I go about it?

[sirHensley]

Printing is a bad example because Java has ways nowadays to print. Take a look at:
http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/j...020-print.html

However, any windows specific calls (like use of win23 apis) will need to be done through JNI.