Can I Add String To .RT Instead Of Using String Table?

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a_unique_name

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Hi Folks:

Developing on Window 10 Pro, VS 2015 Community, C++.

Im always apprehensive when I add or alter text using the string table.

Ive seen text change when I havent touched keyboard or mouse. Like its haunted!

I find myself looking at a line of text that isnt what I want, but I have no idea what else, if anything, has been changed.

Its to the point now that I alter text of existing strings in the .RC file with the editor.

I have hundreds of strings defined in the string table, so if a string is screwed up Id never know about it until the client, or one of their customers, might stumble across it.

The numeric constant values defined for each of the strings run from 1 to 357. Theres a gap in the numbers and the numeric constants for the next group of strings are 1000 to 1339. Another gap and the numeric values for the next group of strings is 40001 and currently the last string has a value of 40456.

This happened to me again early this morning.

I copied one string in the table, string name, defined numeric value of 90 and associated text, in order to have a similar but different copy of it. I pasted it into the table and it materialized at the bottom of the table with a numeric value of, I believe, 357. In my experience a "2" is appended to the name of the string, to prevent a duplicate, but I didnt have time to notice if that was the case on this occasion. As I altered the string name, to make it unique, the numeric value jumped to, I believe, 40456 and the text associated with the name was nothing like the text Id copied. I have no way of knowing if this altered some random string so I exited VS without saving anything.

On more than one occasion Ive seen the table change when I wasnt touching the keyboard or mouse. Ive seen a name I recognized with a text value that I didnt. I was hoping this behavior would go away with VS 2015, but maybe its a wonderful feature Microsofts engineered into the string table code. A feature Im not sophisticated enough to appreciate.

Has anybody else seen this behavior?

I can see the obvious method to add strings to the .RC file, and define a corresponding constant in the resource.h file. I just want to make sure doing this wont mess something up.

The string table seems to be defined in the .RC file in groups of 16 strings surrounded by:

STRINGTABLE
BEGIN
.
.
.
END

Can I just add a string in this block of code and define a constant for it in resource.h?

This page says everything in a STRINGTABLE block has to be the same except for the last four bits. So I guess it goes after the string with the highest numeric value, which isnt in the last STRINGTABLE block in the .RC file. This is going to be fun.

Anything else I need to do?

Thanks
Larry

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