Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!adobe!asente
From: asente@adobe.com (Paul Asente)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Reparenting widgets in Xt Intrinsics
Message-ID: <11769@adobe.UUCP>
Date: 28 Feb 91 06:27:11 GMT
References: <1991Feb27.161015.12890@viewlogic.com>
Sender: news@adobe.COM
Organization: Adobe Systems Inc.
Lines: 20

The reason Xt mandates top-down widget construction is resources.  If you
allowed parentless construction of the widget "fred" and there was a resource
specification:

mary.bob.thelma.fred.width: 30

you would have to recompute fred's resources (or delay computing them) when
the final place in the widget tree was determined.  I guarantee that this
two-phase resource resolution would make the current multi-phase creation
look simple by comparison.  It also means that the advantage described, that
the parent could know the geometries of all its children when being created,
wouldn't really be an advantage.  There could be another resource specification

mary.bart.thelma.fred.width:50

and when "fred" was added to "thelma" the size of "fred" would remain unknown
until "thelma" was added to "bob" or "bart".

	-"paul" asente
		asente@adobe.com	...decwrl!adobe!asente