[LAD] Specification issues in open systems

[Fons Adriaensen]

On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 06:18:14PM +0100, Chris Williams wrote:

> ... but also the idea that the plugin
> should implement the Widget interface while the host should
> already be running the gtk main loop. Ouch.

There should not be any problem with that, even
if the host and plugin use different toolsets.

The core problem is that GUI toolkits don't
give you acess to the interfaces to do this,
even if these *must* be present internally
for the toolkit to work at all.

What is needed is to break open a few things
that usually are monolithic:

1 - Initialisation of the toolkit. A toolkit
should be able to initialise itself *given*
a bare X Display pointer and maybe some other
(simple) things. This would allow a plugin
to init its toolkit from information given
by the host.

2. - Creation of windows (frames). A toolkit
should be able to create a frame object in
its own world *given* a bare X window handle,
a parent handle, etc.

1 an 2 to are just similar to the stdio lib
being able to create a FILE from a given 
file desciptor rather than opening it itself.

3. The main loop. At least separate _getting_
(including waiting for) X events, and _handling_
them into two distinct calls (the user has to
write the while(1) loop around them in that
case - who cares ?). Events that refer to 
windows not created by the toolkiit should go
to a user-defined callback, where they will
be passed to the plugin(s).

CIao,

-- 
FA

Laboratorio di Acustica ed Elettroacustica
Parma, Italia

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