On Tue, Jul 24, 2001 at 11:50:53PM +0900, Edward Wilson wrote:
> > 
> > Despite my previous point, I do not really approve the GTK approach. Why on
> > earth not implement the stuff in C++ when that is what you are trying to do.
> > Choose the right language for the right job. The Fox toolkit deliberately
> > chose C++ for that reason.
> > 
> 
> Ditto.  I beleive GTK would have been better implemented in C++ or
> obj-C. Sure, the framework is more portable, but much less
> useful/powerful.

"Sure the framework is more portable". !!!

I guess this is why the decision was made.  Implementing it in C gives you a
_lot_ of advantages compared to implementing it in c++.

First, the C ABI is very stable, while C++ (especially with gcc) has some
problems here.

Second, a C API makes it easier to do binding for various other languages
(perl, phtyon, ruby, smalltalk, eiffel, ....).

And it is easiert (IMHO) to do C++ bindings of an oo-style c programm, than
to do C binding of an oo-style c++ program. 

And if you look at qt, which uses c++ - they still needed a preprocessor
(although c++ is more powerfull) - which is IMHO a bad design decision.

greetings, Florian Pflug