[Lazarus] GUI Front-end to Windows console application???

[Bo Berglund]

I need to build a GUI application, which should act as a simple-to-use
front-end to a Windows console program.
The console program accepts a number of different commands, which are
specified on its command line as parameters separated by spaces.
When the console program is started with these parameters it performs
its task and then exits.

The command line parameters are rather complex and this is why I would
like to build the GUI application in Delphi7 so I can present a
comfortable view of it.

So now I need it to do the following:

1) Run the console program with the given parameters.

2) Read back the output of the console program (it will be printed in
the console).

3) Detect when the console program asks something and let the user
read this in the GUI app and then respond to it by typing in the GUI.

In the past (Using Delphi) and for other reasons I created a few
helpers which I called ExecStart and ExecWait. Both of these starts a
program, but the Wait variation also waits until the program exits.
I used CreateProcess to start the program and WaitForSingleObject to
check if it finished OK using its handle.

So with ExecStart I can start a program with command line parameters
all right, but how do I pick up the data printed to the console by the
program while it runs?

And how do I enter new input that the program may require when it does
not finish execution?

Any pointers to how this can be done appreciated.


-- 
Bo Berglund
Developer in Sweden