Subject: Zero Memory Widget Library

From: Shlomi Fish <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 16:08:24 +0200 (IST)

Spotted on Freshmeat: the Zero Memory Widget Library:

http://www710.univ-lyon1.fr/~exco/ZMW/

A GUI library whose widgets are claimed to occupy a zero amount of memory.
I did not quite understand how it works, but you may find it interesting.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish        [email-masked]
Home Page:         http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/

Writing a BitKeeper replacement is probably easier at this point than getting
its license changed.

	Matt Mackall on OFTC.net #offtopic.

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From: guy keren <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 00:54:52 +0200 (IST)

> I did not quite understand how it works, but you may find it interesting.

it's a fraud. it uses one global 'zmw' variable to hold what i would call
"the zmw root window", and uses it to point to a tree of widgets. so zero
memory? not realy.

and they also require the user to allocate memory, when there is a need
for dynamic memory usage.

and you need to use static variables in various functions to get over this
odd library's limitations - which means at most one instance of a widget
defined by a given variable. or will you find a way to overcome this
limitation?

-- 
guy

"For world domination - press 1,
 or dial 0, and please hold, for the creator." -- nob o. dy

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From: Muli Ben-Yehuda <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 23:18:59 +0200

> defined by a given variable. or will you find a way to overcome this

With apologies to Archimedes, give me a big enough static variable,
and I will move the earth ;-)  

Cheers, 
Muli 
-- 
Muli Ben-Yehuda
http://www.mulix.org | http://mulix.livejournal.com/

"the nucleus of linux oscillates my world" - gccbot@#offtopic

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From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 09:29:47 +0200

> "the zmw root window", and uses it to point to a tree of widgets. so zero

I haven't looked into this library, so I don't really know what I'm talking
about, but let me guess - perhaps they mean it's a widget set that takes
zero memory on the X *server* machine?

One of the problems with the good-old-widget-sets (I don't know about the
new stuff like Gtk or Qt) is that each widget was a separate X window.
This was convenient for the widget writers, because the X server took of
a lot of things (such as event propagation) for them, but it causes a window
with a lot of widgets (labels, buttons, menus, etc.) to be very heavy on
the X server memory - even when this applications window isn't visible at
all. Some widgets were specifically written to allow many tiny elements to be
placed in it without each one being a seperate X window - prime examples are
Tk's text widget and canvas widget. I am sure (or at least hope) that in
applications like Mozilla, not each and every link, button, and form on a
giant HTML page is created as a full widget with its own X window.

So perhaps this zmw has widgets that don't take up memory on the X server?

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |     Tuesday, Dec 16 2003, 21 Kislev 5764
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-790466, ICQ 13349191 |An egotist is a person of low taste, more
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |interested in himself than in me.