Re: base widgets growing uncontrollably.... ?

[david(at)dfanning.com (David Fanning)]

Paul van Delst writes:
 
> Each separate compound widget function realises *and* registers the widget using
> XMANAGER. I did this so that when I killed the top level base, the cleanup
> routines for all the child compound widgets would be called. If I don't do a 
> 
> XMANAGER, id, 'widget_name', /JUST_REG, CLEANUP = 'widget_name_cleanup'
> 
> in the compound widget creation functions, then I am left with a bunch of
> dangling pointers - that used to be in the compound widget's top-level base user
> value - hanging about afterwards. The XMANAGER call in *each* compound widget
> creation function was the only way I could get stuff cleaned up in a
> heirarchial-type of way. I want to keep the information structure for each
> compound widget separate in it's own top-level base user value (rather than
> shoving everything in the god-base uvalue) as I envisage these routines to be
> usable on their own, not just as a component of a container GUI.
> 
> If anyone has a better method of doing this please let me know. I couldn't
> figure out how to make the child widget cleanup routines (for the compound
> widgets) "visible" unless I put in separate XMANAGER calls.

I only ever have a single XMANAGER command in a widget
program. But I almost always have compound widgets
(and almost all of these are compound widget objects
these days). The way I clean these widget objects up
is by using a KILL_NOTIFY on the compound widget's
top-level base. This is allowed, because these are
not really top-level bases, of course, and are not
directly managed by XMANAGER. I always store the
object reference in some easy-to-locate uvalue in
the object widget, so it is easy to find the object
reference and destroy it. This cleans everything up
properly.

Cheers,

David

-- 
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting
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