Re: Adding full introspection information (#139486)

[muppet <scott asofyet org>]

On Nov 6, 2004, at 9:12 AM, Owen Taylor wrote:

> On Sat, 2004-11-06 at 08:34 -0500, muppet wrote:
> > answer this, then:  how will this introspection info help to bind
> > GBoxed types (generic structures)
>
> If they are simple structures like GdkRectangle, that's reasonable to
> include within

did you trail off here or mean "include within G_TYPE_POINTER 
properties"?

the problem here is that the boxed types will require either a full 
description of their members' types and offsets in typelib, or 
hand-written glue to access the members.  for example, in gtk2-perl, 
some structures get automatically turned into native perl data 
structures (a hash or array), and this marshaling requires hand-written 
glue for each type; even if you don't do this, we have to hand-code (or 
custom-generate) accessors for each struct member.


> >  G_TYPE_POINTER object properties,
>
> Shouldn't be any in properly bindable APIS.

"shouldn't" is the key; there are several.  in fact, some signals with 
proper argument types still require custom marshalers to get the 
semantics correct (write-through parameters, etc).

in gtk+ itself, there are several signals with G_TYPE_POINTER 
properties:

GtkEditable::insert_text
GtkMenuItem::toggle_size_request
GtkNotebook::switch_page
GtkPathBar::path-clicked  (not public, is it?)
GtkSpinButton::input
GtkTreeModel::rows_reordered


> > variadic C functions,
>
> These are only convenience functionality in properly bindable APIs. The
> language binding might need similar convenience glue that is hand-
> written.

in other words, you don't think that Maciej's goal of zero hand-written 
code in bindings (even for well-behaved APIs) is possible?

i think it will suffer at the hands of the 90-10 rule; it will be quite 
easy to get 90% of the bindings done right and automatic, but that last 
10%, mostly esoteric but some critical things, will be an albatross.

--
If I lived in Teletubby Land, the homicide rate would be four.
  -- elysse