Re: Boxed Types

[James Henstridge <james daa com au>]

Daniel Elstner wrote:

> Now, I've several questions:
>
> Why are copy/free for GtkTextIter public, but not for GdkRectangle?
Don't know.  Note that you can access the copy/free function for an 
arbitrary boxed type like so:
   copy_of_rectangle = g_boxed_copy(GDK_TYPE_RECTANGLE, rectangle);
   g_boxed_free(GDK_TYPE_RECTANGLE, copy_of_rectangle);

So if you know the typecode, you can copy and free it.  I use this in 
pygtk for generic handling of boxed types.

> Is there a generic way to know whether a type can be copied by simple
> assigments, or do we have to look at the docs/headers?  (Some kind of
> flag retrievable via the g_type_* API would be useful.)
no.

> If a struct can be assigned, is it guaranteed that this won't change in
> a future version?
GTK 2.0 is now stable.  I would assume that such a change would break 
compatibility, and hence be a no no.  For GTK 3.0 however, it is 
possible some things may change (no idea what; don't think anyone has 
much idea of the specifics of 3.0 at this point).

> Currently, no GTK+ functions return a dynamically allocated
> GtkTextIter.  Is it safe to rely on this?
The return of g_boxed_copy() should be freed with g_boxed_free() 
(passing the same typecode).  That is all you should need to know.

James.

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