[Fresco-devel] A Graphic Dictionary

Hi!

In preparation to tackle task40 (scenegraph debugging framework) I started to 
write a Dictionary that Kits can register their Graphics plus some additional 
informations with. As Stefan suggested this is a way to have debug 
informations on Graphics without the need of cluttering up the CORBA 
interfaces.

Downside: As this Dictionary is not exported via CORBA this dictionary is not 
accessible for remote Graphics and cannot get queried by applications. It is 
purely server internal.

So far I register a name for a graphic and a 'creator stack'. I orginally 
thought such a stack would be useful for debugging... Here is how it works: 
Let's assume we have a WidgetKit whos button-method returns an object 
generated by the FigureKit. Entering the WidgetKit it pushes "WidgetKit" onto 
the creator-stack and then requests a new Graphic from the FigureKit. That 
pushes "FigureKit" onto the creator stack, generates a Graphic, and registers 
it with the Dictionary, giving it a name and asking the Dictionary to set a 
creator of "WidgetKit::FigureKit". "FigureKit" now gets poped from the stack 
again and any additional Graphics created by the WidgetKit will just have 
"WidgetKit" for their creator. So much for the theory... it seems to work 
fine, although with CORBA and multithreading going on I'm not so sure it will 
work in all cases. As additional debugging info what I get now should be 
fine:-)

What do you think about such a Dictionary? Is that a good thing to have?

I was wondering wether such a dictionary can be used to help with the 
switching of Kits at runtime. With the creator stored with each Graphic we 
have a good idea how to reconstruct the server with a different Kit, if we 
store some method-identifier allong with each subcreator (basically a name 
for each subcreator). We'd need to write up a CORBA interface for the whole 
thing: Remote Graphics must be able to store their data in the dictionary 
then.

-- 
Gruss,
Tobias

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Tobias Hunger           The box said: 'Windows 95 or better'
[email protected]                      So I installed Linux.
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