Re: GTK+ Modules and GDK

[Bill Haneman <bill haneman sun com>]

Joel said:

> 	I must admit I can't quickly come up with a situation where I'd
> want to start a GUI toolkit without a GUI, 

I can ;-)

for instance, accessibility... if I'm using a braille display, why do I
need a video card?  Of course some/all of GTK+ might not work very well
without a backing GDK instance.

This is reminiscent of the situation with 'headless Java' which was a
major PITA for a long time.  Lots of folks wanted to use Java apps
server-side, conversion utilities, etc. but couldn't unless there was a
valid DISPLAY.  The workaround is usually Xvfb, to create a virtual
display.  However that may conflict with our accessibility support.

It's quite possible as well that a non-GUI application or utility might
want to use some GTK+ api.

I think use of ATK without GTK+ is already possible, and certainly
assume that any app can use glib without a DISPLAY.

-Bill

> but the ability for GTK+ and
> modules to do per-display work is obviously needed.  I like your E)
> solution with the init()/init_display() calls.  It covers all the bases
> and cleanly maps to the problem space, whereas some of the other
> solutions are roundabout or unintuitive to the module programmer.
> 
> Joel