Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!WSL.DEC.COM!haynes
From: haynes@WSL.DEC.COM
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Xtk Resource Converters
Message-ID: <8805252116.AA21083@gilroy.dec.com>
Date: 25 May 88 21:16:41 GMT
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 18

This is one of the reasons I hate C. In a reasonable language you would
have module initialization happen automatically at program startup.
Since C doesn't do this, you have to do your own initialization
MANUALLY. We do some of this for you with the static class
initializers, where the class initialization code gets called before
the first instance of that class is created, however the mechanism
should be more general.

It should be possible for a package that exports functionality, like a
resource type converter, to have it's initalizer called automatically.
Unfortunately no such mechanism exists, and implementing *automatic*
package initialization in C is hard. So I'm afraid you're stuck with
either initializing all of your classes manually, and registering the
type converter in the class initialization code, or providing an
explicit intializer for your stuff, and requiring your clients to call it.

	Wish we had a modern language to do this in...
	-- Charles