Re: RFC: Part 1 of new GObject tutorial

[Roger Leigh <rleigh whinlatter ukfsn org>]

Ryan McDougall <NQG24419 nifty com> writes:

> As promised I finished the the first part of a tutorial I started
> writing for the fun of it. It only includes making a pretty lame
> fundamental class with no inheritance, but its is (hopefully) very
> comprehensive and clear. There are code examples included.
>
> Therefore I'm asking everyone with some experience to give it a read
> over for technical mistakes, or unclear language.

OK.  These are all the things I could see:

1. main() in gobject-tutorial-example1.c should be in a separate
   file--it's not part of the class implementation.

2. The class finaliser does nothing, so personally I would not include
   it.

3. Should people really be encouraged to use fundamental types, rather
   than deriving from GObject?

4. While the example works, I personally find examples easier to
   follow when they have a useful purpose.  Currently I can see what
   your example is showing, but I can't see a /point/ to it.  Compare
   it with this example:

      http://people.debian.org/~rleigh/gtk/ogcalc/ogcalc-1.0.4.tar.gz
      (this was even simpler than your tutorial nine months ago!)

   I would suggest keeping the class the same, but give the class name
   and fields some names and purpose that the reader can relate to.

5. The tutorial text could use some line wrapping.  If you use Emacs,
   try "M-x text-mode" and then press "M-q" while point is in each
   paragraph, which will nicely flow the text.  It's not too readable
   on a text terminal :(

6. You might find a typesetting system such as LaTeX makes writing
   much easier :)  Feel free to copy stuff out of my tutorial,
   providing your licence is GPL-compatible.

7. "objects' livetimes".  I think you mean "lifetimes".

8. The unfinished part 2 needs to be vary careful in describing
   base/class/instance init/finalise functions, in order to clearly
   differentiate their role, execution order, required usage and
   examples of each.


> Next section will tackle inheriting from GObject, and the one after will
> be about inheriting from our custom class.

Sounds great!  I am finding GObject very nice, but will really
appreciate some more documentation on the subject.  I look forward to
reading it.


Regards,
Roger

-- 
Roger Leigh

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