simplifying memory management in panes

[Rob Browning]

Robert Graham Merkel <rgmerk@mira.net> writes:

> WRT our discussions on simplifying panes by replacing the
> gnc_report_window * member of the gnc_pane structure with a
> GtkWidget *, I agree that this would be a win.  However, if we are
> to have some reasonable hope of saving/restoring state (not to
> mention the popup menu issues) we can't just have arbitrary
> GtkWidgets put in panes.

Though I only vaguely understand the issue here and may be inserting
foot in mouth, it seems like this could be handled by just documenting
the set of things you're allowed to put into a pane if you plan to use
that paneset in an application that involves save/restore.  Then I
presume we can ask the widgets, during a save/restore about their
types, and just ignore any ones that you don't know what to do with
(and which shouldn't be there).

If we can't recognize the valid types without extra help, then I
suppose we could just require that "save/restoreable" things be tagged
somehow.  I can think of half-baked schemes which might allow this,
but it's not worth dwelling on until/unless we need it.

Hope this is relevant.

-- 
Rob Browning <rlb@cs.utexas.edu> PGP=E80E0D04F521A094 532B97F5D64E3930