Re: A couple of small bugs + patches

["Charlie Schmidt" <ishamael themes org>]

-

ill leave it to paolo too, but in my opinion is it better to leave it as
a GtkWidget.  what if it *ISNT* a GtkMenu (for whatever reason), the only
thing that every object *must* be in Gtk is a GtkWidget (ok, sure a
GtkObject, but thats opaque).  but whatever.

From: Dave Carrigan
Subject: Re: A couple of small bugs + patches
Date: 28 Feb 2001 20:27:00 -0800


> "Charlie Schmidt" <ishamael themes org> writes:
>  
>  > it makes perfect sense in C, as Gtk+ has its own object system.
>  > it returns a GtkWidget, but you can just use the macro:
>  > 
>  > GTK_MENU(widget); 
>  > 
>  > to cast it as a menu.
>  > 
>  > i think that the bindings should be as accurate as possible so:
>  > 
>  > bless(bless $objectmenu->get_menu, 'Gtk::Menu');
>  
>  After thinking about this for a while, I think that this is not a good
>  idea.
>  
>  In an object-oriented system, an object should know what kind of class
>  it is. The programmer should never have to cast an object into its
>  correct class; the language should take care of that. Just because C
>  programmers are forced to do this doesn't make it right; it just
>  demonstrates that the C language does not have much support for
>  object-oriented design.  Since gtk-perl is able to bless a Gtk object
>  into its real class, it should do so.
>  
>  This is especially true in consideration of the fact that a Gtk::Menu
>  ISA Gtk::Widget, so returning a Gtk::Menu will not affect any programs
>  that are expecting a Gtk::Widget.
>  
>  I will leave it up to Paolo, but, IMO, unnecessarily forcing Perl
>  programmers to bless objects into the correct class is a bad design.
>  

-- 
Charlie Schmidt - <ishamael themes org>