Re: Obj: FTLayout (was Re: Short Roadmap)

[Sven Neumann]

Hi,

David Turner <address@hidden> writes:

>   Pango uses the "GLib" library, which provides a "checked"
>   malloc that simply _traps_ the program/application when
>   an out of memory condition is raised.
> 
>   that's of course a major convenience when writing client
>   applications that must run on a PC with plenty of swap space,
>   given that never checking memory allocation _greatly_ simplifies
>   C code. However, it's a major disaster when you need to write
>   a system-level library that should _never_ crash your system
>   or graphics server..

wouldn't it be a good idea to change glib so that it would allow the
application to specify an error handler for the out of memory 
situation which overides the default behaviour (to quit with an error 
message) ? GLib-2.0 is still under active development and I think it 
might still be early enough to suggest such a change.

It would be a shame if Pange and similar software would have to be 
rewritten only because of the malloc routines in glib. I have 
looked into the glib code and it looks like the suggested change
would be trivial to implement. What do you think?


Salut, Sven