tomt@maui.coral.COM (Tom Tulinsky) (06/29/90)
Hope you don't mind my using the bandwidth for this question, but why are the
names of Motif resources and classes #defined to strings instead of integer
constants? Its not a big deal, but it seems like integers would be
more efficient to compare.
Coral
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NETWORKS kit@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Chris D. Peterson) (06/29/90)
> Hope you don't mind my using the bandwidth for this question, but why are the > names of Motif resources and classes #defined to strings instead of integer > constants? Its not a big deal, but it seems like integers would be > more efficient to compare. The names an classes are used, not only in application code, but also for application customization using the X Resource Manager. Each widget and widget resource is identified by both a name and class that are represented as strings. These string representations allow the widget attributes to be modified by both the programmer and user, using resource manager. It turns out that the internal representation of these strings are in what we call "quarks". A quark is an integer representation of a string. This was implemented to address the problem that you mention of excessive memory consumption by a database that is accessed through a list of strings. To avoid a proliferation of interfaces the X Toolkit provides only a string interface for the XtSetValues. Since the number of resources an application sets is small (especially if the application programmer is making proper use of the resource manager through the app-defaults file), it was felt the memory savings did not justify another complete set of interfaces. Chris D. Peterson MIT X Consortium Net: kit@expo.lcs.mit.edu Phone: (617) 253 - 9608 Address: MIT - Room NE43-213
ben@hpcvlx.cv.hp.com (Benjamin Ellsworth) (06/30/90)
Because the Xt Intrinsics demand it. The intrinsics need them because the Xrm stuff (upon which all of the is based) needs strings or their more compact form (Quarks). --- Ben