Re: [g-a-devel] ATK - Signal indicating new AtkObject creation.

[Michael Meeks <michael meeks novell com>]

On Tue, 2009-01-13 at 17:35 +0000, Mark Doffman wrote:
> This would be my preferred solution. We don't worry about infinite
> spaces because we don't let them exist.

	IMHO, the current solutions for these are nastily inadequate anyway.

> This probably means adding a table navigation API as tables are
> where infinites spaces exist? Perhaps some sort of cursor API
> for large documents?

	Certainly, navigation APIs are required. OTOH - they are still badly
needed for eg. OO.o [ a common semi-infinite space ] application - AFAIR
the current solution there is some hack around cursor / caret movement
at the end of the page.

	Clearly to represent infinite space to finite people, it is always
necessary to subset, and limit the amount of data that is annotated and
available. At a maximum we have only so many pixels on the screen :-)
Also, applications that already deal with monster data sets have great
existing ways of finding out what is really visible: binary space trees,
portals, clipping, sub-setting, layers, ... ;-) it seems strange to try
to continue to represent a consistent and continuous child index order
across some mix of visible objects, and an indefinite tail of
historically visible objects as one example.

> The other option is to give up and add remote reference counting for
> things that come under "manages-descendants".

	That would be truly horrid :-)

	Regards,

		Michael.

-- 
 michael meeks novell com  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot