Re: Good OO Bindings for Gtk+

[Eric Kidd <eric kidd pobox com>]

On Wed, Apr 14, 1999 at 07:12:43PM -0400, otaylor@redhat.com wrote:
> Note that there has been some work on this already, though it isn't
> totally satisfactory or complete.
> 
> The gtk.defs file in the GTK+ distribution is the current "standard
> format". It lists:

Yeah, I've looked at it. It's good for making bindings in a scripting
language, but it's not equivalent to the full Gtk+ headers.

> I have a vague memory that someone else wrote some header-scanning tools
> for another language binding - though I might be remember an earlier
> message from you ;-)

Quite possibly. I've spent most of the last month getting all the details
right. The bugs all seem to be fixed for the time being--maybe one header
in fifty needs to be edited by hand, and those are usually the ones with
lots of 'static' declarations in them.

Oh, yeah: preprocessor macros containing arbitrary C fragments can't be
imported for obvious reasons. However, macros which contain constant
integer expressions *can* be imported without any trouble.

> I don't want to the throw cold-water on your project, but this is a
> fairly serious problem. Basically, any tools used for GTK+ need to be
> compileable from source and useable without jumping through too many
> hoops. Currently, the only languages used for the GTK+ tools are Perl, C,
> and awk.

OK, let me phrase it another way. In less than thirty hours of work, I can
give you a complete and correct summary of gtk/gtk.h in the format of your
choice. I'll pretend to do this all by hand, but I'll really use tools
which I keep secret. Other tools--ones which co-incidentally happen to
generate this format--will appear on Freshmeat shortly thereafter. The
structures and functions in gnome.h can be included at no extra charge, as
a courtesy to some of my favorite hackers.

That's my last, best offer. Take it or leave it. :-)

Cheers,
Eric