Re: [Devel] FT_Outline_Copy

[Scott Long]

Hello Graham,

Well, this particular project is in C, but I do understand what you 
are saying. Constructors and destructors are the simplest solution, 
because they already know how an object needs to get cleaned up.

I've wondered before, it seems like many people want to keep Freetype 
in C, which I agree with for the most part. But is there any reason 
why we can't have a maintained C++ API to wrap it? It seems silly 
knowing that there are probably hundreds of people using Freetype from 
C++, each of whom has written their own set of wrappers. None of these 
wrapper classes are probably compatible with each other...

Has anyone ever discussed branching off a C++ API that just calls the 
C API? I'd probably be willing to help maintain such a thing, if it 
ever happened. And it would make a lot of people happy, and would be a 
good compromise that avoids having to toss the entire library.

It's a legitimate point that C++ is not as widely standardized as C, 
but if we just adhered to a basic coding standard we could easily 
target most of the modern C++ compilers (g++, Visual C++). That would 
penetrate for at least a large fraction of the C++ users out there. 
Please some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of 
the time, etc..

I guess another option would be to introduce constructors and 
destructors to Freetype, with extremely well-defined semantics about 
when they are supposed to be invoked. That could help at least make it 
easier to manage the problems of object ownership, etc. If the user 
constructs an object, he is responsible for destructing it. If the 
library constructs an object, *it* is responsible for destructing it.

Any other thoughts?

Regards,
Scott Long

On Mon, 23 Sep 2002 21:06:17 +0100
 "Graham Asher" <address@hidden> wrote:
> Scott,
>
> your criticisms of FT_Outline_Copy are really a coded plea for the
> conversion of FreeType to C++ ;-)
>
> I have long argued for this without any success at all, but I have 
> been able
> to take parts of FreeType and turn them into C++, including writing a 
> proper
> outline class that overcomes all the ownership problems. The proof of 
> the
> pudding is in the eating, and I have been eating a far more 
> appetising
> pudding, and one that is moreover easier to cook, for a while. New 
> code
> using (carefully designed) classes takes about half the time to write
> compared to C. Bugs caused by object ownership or lifetime just don't
> happen.
>
> Best regards from a fellow sufferer.
>
> Graham Asher
>
>
>
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Scott Long
SwiftView, Inc. http://www.swiftview.com