property API vs fields

["Steph Fox" <steph zend com>]

Hi GTK people,

The PHP-GTK doc team have hit a point of confusion over the property API in 
GTK 2, mostly because publicly accessible fields hanging over from GTK 1 are 
still publicly accessible. We don't know whether to promote the use of 
*_get_|set_property() or not, and to some extent that depends on whether it 
will eventually be enforced by the GTK+ team.

In PHP, the approach makes a difference to syntax; directly accessible field 
names can't contain a hyphen, but a string parameter 'property' passed to a 
get|set function can. Since some widget properties share the name of a field 
in the same widget, I can see all kinds of confusion in store.

Short version: Is there a plan to phase out publicly accessible fields in 
GTK widgets, or are you intending to retain them for all time as a BC 
consideration?

Sorry if this is covered in the list archives somewhere, your search 
facilities are having a bad day (and MARC's don't work for function names).

- Steph