Re: API changes

[Philip Van Hoof <spam pvanhoof be>]

On Fri, 2006-08-04 at 14:41 +1000, James "Doc" Livingston wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-08-04 at 00:47 +0200, Philip Van Hoof wrote:
> > - Finding another way to detect whether a type is an interface
> >   and fix the python bindings generator this way (this is hard)
> 
> h2def looks at the type of the first member of the class struct to
> determine the parent type. If that type is GTypeInterface, then the type
> is obviously an interface.

Well it didn't work for the current interfaces. While the name was a bit
funky, "Iface" is just part of the type name. So there's no difference
with a normal GTypeInterface and a "Tinymail Interface".

So I wonder how come h2def.py didn't do it right at this moment...

The Iface suffix saved me because it makes it possible to regex-
search-replace it to the correct define-interface line.

filter.py does this, by the way.

> I think that should work in every case where you don't have interfaces
> derived from other interfaces, which (unless you're doing funky things)
> is basically the same as using g_type_interface_add_prerequisite.
> 
> 
> > - In my opinion it should be clear from the type name that it's
> >   an interface. The fact that it's an interface shouldn't be
> >   hidden from the developer. Why should it be?
> 
> Playing the devil's advocate, you could also argue that they shouldn't
> need to be constantly hit over the head with the fact either.
> 
> Anyone that is only using it (as opposed to implementing it) probably
> doesn't care whether it's an interface, an (abstract) class or anything
> else. The only time they would actually care is when they want to create
> one, and so know about a specific implementation or use the factory.
> 
> So not having Iface on the end of interfaces would save them having to
> remember which types are classes (and so don't have them) and which are
> interfaces (and so do).

Ok. Same argumentation as I had for florian. I'm willing to reconsider
it (and that way admit that I'm not always right in my opinion, hehe).


But I would need at least one person to help me with it. One of the
reasons why I can't go for this on my own, is because I'm not fully
convinced myself. And then it's hard to put a significant amount of my
time in it.

But I do see that people, not only me, want to use tinymail. That, is
more important than my opinion or feeling about it.



-- 
Philip Van Hoof, software developer at x-tend 
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