Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!agate!bionet!apple!bloom-beacon!ATHENA.MIT.EDU!swick
From: swick@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ralph R. Swick)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Is this bad form?
Message-ID: <8810271159.AA29271@LYRE.MIT.EDU>
Date: 27 Oct 88 11:59:53 GMT
References: <10572@elroy.Jpl.Nasa.Gov>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Organization: DEC/MIT Project Athena
Lines: 13

> Is it considered bad form (i.e., violating the object-oriented approach) for a
> subclass to use XtSetValues to change a parent-class resource value (based on a
> local resource)?
...
> Since the subclass initializations are performed after the Text  initializations
...
>   This seems tacky.

Yes, it's tacky but it really reflects a deficiency in the implementation
of the superclass, so unless you're willing to fix up the superclass
implementation, I'd overlook it.  On principle, however, I can't think of any
good reason why a subclass should be discouraged from calling XtSetValues
on it's superclass.  This is certainly more OOP-ish that directly manipulating
the superclass data, which hack all widgets are currently guilty of doing.