title: What's the status of message crackers from windowsx.h?
body: <p>The <code>windowsx.h</code> header has a feature called &quot;message crackers&quot;, which lets you use <code>HANDLE_MSG</code> and other macros to automatically decode <code>WPARAM</code> and <code>LPARAM</code>, as received by your window procedure, into a specific message's parameters. As of the Windows 10 SDK, these are still around and not marked deprecated within the header itself, and they still work fine. However, <a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/windowsx/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">MSDN's latest documentation for <code>windowsx.h</code></a> doesn't even mention the existence of them. The only official documentation I can find for them is <code>WINDOWSX.TXT</code> from <a href="https://winworldpc.com/product/windows-sdk-ddk/windows-31" rel="nofollow noreferrer">the Windows <strong>3.1</strong> SDK</a>, as mentioned in <a href="https://jeffpar.github.io/kbarchive/kb/083/Q83456/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Q83456</a>, which is so old that Microsoft doesn't even host it anymore.</p>
  <p>Are message crackers deprecated and just not marked as such, or is their use still recommended? If they're deprecated, where/when was this announced? If their use is still recommended, then why aren't they documented anymore?</p>