Re: GtkTextView->get_iter_at_location bug or user error?

[muppet <scott asofyet org>]

On Wednesday, July 30, 2003, at 06:50  PM, Ross McFarland wrote:

> but why isn't it like everything else in gtk
> and return the iter rather than have a pass by reference and a return
> type of void.

that's the funkiness of the C iterators in gtk.  they are designed for 
speed because they are used *a* *lot*, and thus are meant to be 
allocated on the stack rather than on the heap.  almost all the 
iterator functions for both the text and tree widgets are this way -- 
you pass a pointer to an iterator to be filled with the values for a 
specific context.

in perl, of course, this sort of usage is out of the question, so we 
nearly always return a new iter, except for things like the cursor 
movement functions which modify an iter.  it's a very sloppy aspect of 
the bindings, imho.

get_iter_at_location must have just slipped through the cracks.


> we can change the behavior of Gtk2-Perl and return a GtkTextIter from
> the function as you thought would happen.

this is what should happen.  i had a fix ready when i saw this message. 
 ;-)


> but this doesn't sit well
> with me as i don't know the reason why they implemented it this way in
> the first place. perhaps this is a function that gets called A LOT and
> they don't want to have to do the malloc of a GtkTextIter every time, i
> don't know.

ah, there, you already thought of it.  never mind.  :-)