Re: Question of Style [was Re: Conceptual Question on Signal Handling in Subclasses]

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

Ian Flanigan <flan lean to> writes: 
> The thing is, I've looked through many of the GTK class definitions
> and I've never seen a virtual function that wasn't the default handler
> for a signal.  This leads me to believe that in GTK virtual functions
> are, by convention, only used for signal handling.  Is this true?

Oh, your problem is easy then. No, it isn't true. It's
expected/normal/good to use non-signal virtual functions here.

GTK code (especially older GTK code) tends to make every random
virtual function also be a signal. For example, GtkWidget::show is
just a virtual function, it isn't a signal the widget was shown. 
The rationale is something between "why not?" and "it makes the
function introspectable" and "maybe you want to derive without writing
a subclass."

Typically notification signals are named in the past tense ("clicked")
and virtual functions that may happen to be registered as default
signal handlers are in the imperative ("show", "do_foo").

Havoc