Re: Two gui ABI changes

[Fred Kiefer]

Markus Hitter wrote:
> 
> Am 24.03.2009 um 09:07 schrieb Fred Kiefer:
> 
>> The other change is to give up a special behaviour in GNUstep. Apple
>> documents that calls to [NSView setNeedsDisplay:] (and
>> setNeedsDisplayInRect:) only work as expected on the main thread.
>> GNUstep has some code that lets these methods do their work on a
>> secondary thread as well.
> 
> Isn't this a serious enhancement over Cocoa? As far as I can see,
> there's nothing stopping you from writing Cocoa-compatible code with
> GNUstep, so I'm not sure wether it's wise to introduce limitations just
> to enhance portability slightly. Any chance for a #ifdef
> COCOA_COMPATIBILITY compile time flag or even a runtime check (global
> flag which NSLog()'s a warning if set and this feature is used)?

Yes, it is an enhancement in GNUstep, but it costs run time and will
results in applications not being portable. What it does is to save
programmers that make changes to gui objects the hassle of restricting
these changes to the main thread, as only there setNeedsDisplay: will
work properly on Cocoa. But then, any application that relies on this
feature will fail on Apple systems.