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From: mayer@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM (Niels Mayer)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x.motif
Subject: Re: XmLabel question
Message-ID: <5875@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM>
Date: 2 Sep 90 00:36:49 GMT
References: <118526@linus.mitre.org> <141712@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Reply-To: mayer@hplabs.hp.com (Niels Mayer)
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Labs, Software & Systems Lab, Palo Alto, CA.
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In article <141712@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> argv@turnpike.Eng.Sun.COM (Dan Heller) writes:
>Another thing to consider is the fact that to hard-code the label, you have
>to create a compound string (which allocates memory) and then free it.
>If you are doing this for hundreds of labels (which isn't uncommon),
>then you're going to fragment your heap space pretty quickly and lower
>your performance ratio.
>
>Footnote: Probably a good enhancement for Motif 1.1.1 would be a routine
>that created and returned a pointer to a compound string that was stored
>in static space. Each call would overwrite the contents of the previous
>call -- that way, you can use strings that are temporary all over the 
>place without all that overhead of allocating and deallocating memory.

This has been my feeling about the Xtoolkit in general, and the problem
becomes ridiculous with compound strings. Such memory usage could be done
in a number of places throughout Motif. There's more than just compound
strings that get gratuitously copied and freed every time you do anything.

I'd like to even go so far as to have the Toolkit not create a copy of
every resource passed in from the user's space; rather, it should take the
user's object, and do whatever the hell it pleases with it, freeing it when
it is done with it (unless it was statically allocated). If you are
planning on doing something with data that you passed in to Motif, then
make a copy of it for yourself!  Afterall, this is programming in C where
you are supposed to understand and worry about memory management yourself.
If you want to be a pinko-commie and program in Lisp or some other wussy
garbage collected language, then do it in Lisp. :-) The way things are now
with Xt/Motif programming, you get all the pain and tedium of programming
in C, and all the efficiency of Lisp. We should be striving for the
opposite.

Note that I have nothing against Lisp -- afterall, my WINTERP rapid
prototyping and extension language is based on a small Lisp interpreter
(XLISP) that is implemented in C. When I'm writing application-UI code, I
am a Lisp pinko-commie about 99% of the time. When I write in C, I expect
to program like a ruthless-capitalist -- laissez-faire -- too bad about the
poor lazy proletariate that can't figure out how to manage their own memory
(nothing like stretching an analogy to the point of stupidity :-)

Another enhancement would be to throw out Motif's XmStrings and allow good
ol' fashioned normal null-terminated char strings to be used by default.
Using Compound strings, or 16byte-char-strings should be something that can
be done optionally, by either a runtime global resource switch, or
compile-time option, or perhaps both. Although I guess having strings that
go left-to-right roman and right-to-left arabic within the same widgit will
be useful when the OSF its Oil Company conspirators annex Iraq. :-(

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	    Niels Mayer -- hplabs!mayer -- mayer@hplabs.hp.com
	 "Founding member, UIL and XmString Haters International"
	    THESE OPINIONS ARE PERSONAL, I AM NOT SPEAKING FOR:
		   Human-Computer Interaction Department
		       Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
			      Palo Alto, CA.
				     *