Re: Preliminary design for libmailcheck- comments appreciated

[Maciej Stachowiak <mstachow alum mit edu>]

Havoc Pennington <hp@Mcs.Net> wrote:
>
> Anyway, the more complex interface you give above is only used by the
> configuration panel and the backend. The interface for applications will
> just be:
> 
> MailCheck backend interface:
>  register(MailChecker* checker);
> 
> MailChecker (frontend)
>  notify();  /* Called by backend when there is new mail */
> 
> Ideally this would be done with some kind of event-subscription system,
> much like Gtk signals, but we don't have anything like that so the above
> should work fine.

Actually, I was thinking it could be useful to have something inheriting from
GtkObject that wraps the IDL for mail checking, so that you could actually
have a Gtk signal when new mail arrives (with parameters indicating which
mailbox, perhaps). The Gtk signal abstraction provides many useful features
above just calling a notify function, and inheriting from GtkObject should
make the interface easier to wrap for bindings for other languages.

 - Maciej