Re: why do constructors return GtkWidget?

[Emmanuel Touzery <emmanuel touzery free fr>]

>  I'm also using the real types in my declarations, though I'm paying 
> the price with casts. 

And here I mean:


    GtkMenuItem *dir_or_not = GTK_MENU_ITEM 
(gtk_menu_item_new_with_label ("Or not"));
    gtk_menu_shell_append (GTK_MENU_SHELL (directory_filter_menu),
            GTK_WIDGET (dir_or_not));

The price I'm paying here is GTK_MENU_ITEM and GTK_WIDGET. Which would 
both go away with another convention.

As I said, I believe if the convention was changed to return the real 
types most of the GTK programs would not have an increase in the number 
of casts (now that GUIs are built with GtkBuilder). But who knows.

I guess this wouldn't even change the ABI (??) it would just cause old 
code to compile with warnings (except those who build with -Werr ;-) ).

Well in any case let's forget it, I guess it's impossible to change this 
by now, so this is all just rhetorical. But thanks for the clarifications.

emmanuel