SHELL32 6.0 Ordinal-Only Exports

Though Microsoft started documenting many functions, both old and new, some time in the life of version 6.0, a look at the new functions exported only by ordinal reveals that games with having the shell export functions for special friends are hardly likely to end any time soon. Of 38 new ordinal-only exports for Windows XP, only 7 got documented as Settlement Program Interfaces. Another, SHGetImageList, seems to have been documented independently of the settlement. Each function that has eventually got documented has also become exported by name while retaining its ordinal.

The builds for Windows Vista add so many functions that one must wonder why at least the minor version number was not increased. Perhaps Microsoft figures that if the functions are never documented, which none are in the Windows Vista SDK dated January 2007, then programmers outside Microsoft have no need for any guide to which functions are in which builds.