From: Jon M. Taylor <taylorj@ecs.csus.edu>
  To  : Tristan Wibberley <twibberley@llamacom.com>
  Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1998 14:27:29 -0700 (PDT)

Re: New function in libggiMisc RFC.

On Sun, 30 Aug 1998, Tristan Wibberley wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I think something is needed for greater window system support (in X and
> eventually berlin).
> 
> It would be nice to see sets of widgets that use ggi to draw. I propose
> one new call in ggiMisc and some new struct definitions.
> 
> The call would do nothing on most targets, but on X you fill in a struct
> with some data such as title, geometry, borderstyle and pass that to
> this function which the target implements. GGI should not specify the
> behaviour but the target should - ie, you need to know what you're
> doing, but it's not complicated.

	Metadata, metadata, metadata.  All you need is void pointers and
metadata type registries and you can set up arbitrary "protocols" to pass
arbitrary metadata between targets.
 
> We need a way to tell what target ggiOpen(NULL) has chosen, is that
> possible already. 

	I'm still learning this stuff too, but...

> A programmer needs to be able to choose how to fill in
> the struct for the windowsystem being used.

	Right.  Just like programs that use LibGGI3D shaders need to know
what data the individual shaders need.
 
> This definately needs a lot of thought, but I think we should implement
> something like this.

	I agree.  A generic metadata-passing and registry mechanism in
ggiMisc would be very, very useful.

Jon 

---
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