Re: The big divide - graphics contexts and window servers

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On Sunday, March 17, 2002, at 10:59 PM, Adam Fedor wrote:

> I'd like to propose a reasonably radical change in the GNUstep backend 
> structure. While thinking about how to implement better graphic 
> rendering in GNUstep I realized that the current backend structure is 
> not very clean. Currently it consists of functions that handle windows 
> and events (which rarely change, at least on a single platform) and 
> functions that handle graphics (of which there are numerous libraries 
> available, even for the same platform). I think we should split these 
> up, into say, a GSWindowServer object, which handles display(window) 
> and event issues, and the current NSGraphicsContext, which just handles 
> drawing.

I'm not sure how much splitting into a separate class would help (which 
is not to say I'm against it),
but I have really never liked using the dps-style functions for these 
operations.

I would much prefer a conventional method interface for window 
manipulation operations,
whether those are methods of a graphics context or another class 
entirely seems less
important to me.  The one issue that probably needs extra consideration 
might be if
we ever want the gui to work multi-threaded ... I guess the way window 
management is
handled might be significant there - though I see no obvious problems 
with having this
done in a separate class.