Re: Enums, flags and ::

Hey Scott, The readability point of view's where we started. Unfortunately your 'readability point of view' clashes diametrically with mine :) I just did some rough head-counts: ATK has 8 enum classes PANGO has 12 enum classes and 1 flag class GDK has 39 enum classes and 10 flag classes GTK has 69 enum classes, 19 flag classes, 5 non-enum constants and 15 fundamental types GLADE doesn't register anything other than its class type So far so good. Then I looked at Tom's early Scintilla work and blanched. SCN (or whatever its prefix ends up being) apparently has over a thousand separate registered class constants. This may or may not be the way ext/scintilla ends up - but it kind of gives weight to Andrei's argument. Point taken. It's not what we have now, it's what we _might_ have in the future that's the issue here. In the face of which, I'm forced to back down & mourn the passing of GTK_*. Anyone else have any strong views over the way GTK::INTERNAL_ENUM should be written in our code and docs, while we're there? - Steph ----- Original Message ----- From: "Scott Mattocks" <scott@crisscott.com> To: "Andrei Zmievski" <andrei@gravitonic.com> Cc: "Steph Fox" <steph@zend.com>; "PHP-GTK dev" <php-gtk-dev@lists.php.net>; "Madeleine D." <mmdrake@bctonline.com> Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2005 9:31 PM Subject: Re: [PHP-GTK-DEV] Enums, flags and :: > Andrei Zmievski wrote: > > On Oct 25, 2005, at 1:04 PM, Steph Fox wrote: > > > >> What's the deal about global scope? OK there could be namespace > >> collisions - but on the other hand those are GTK+ constants, easily > >> recognisable and AFAIK used everywhere that uses GTK+. It'd have to be a > >> very 'newbie' error to name a local constant GTK_*, given that scenario. > > > > What about GDK_*? PANGO_*? ATK_*? GLADE_*? SOMEOTHEREXTENSION_*? How > > will this look when all the extensions register their constants globally? > > Personally, I like having everything separated out by extension. I think > Gtk::SOME_CONSTANT is cleaner than GTK_SOME_CONSTANT. (Please note my > not so subtle vote for Gtk as opposed to GTK) I don't think that > sticking with Gtk+ style is a valid argument. By that argument we should > have the same function calls to. I don't think anyone wants to have > gtk_tree_view_get_selection() instead of $treeView->get_selection(). > > I don't think the scope of a constant matters much to the end user. No > matter what scope a constant is in, it should behave the same. I think > this needs to be addressed from a PHP-GTK programmer's readability point > of view and I just think that Gtk:: is easier to read and follow than GTK_. > > Scott