[Java-gnome-hackers] Handling Events in java-gnome

[Philip A. C. <pc...@td...>]

Everyone,

As we are working on the new API for java-gnome, we should think about
how events will be treated.  Should we use the event/listener model used
by swing and so familiar to most Java developers?  The obvious reason to
use it is simply because it is so familiar to Java developers.  The
down-side is that (a) it can be slow if you have a lot of listeners or a
lot of different levels though which events must pass and (b) developers
do not always unregister listeners when its usefullness has expired;
causing memory leaks.

The problem with memory leaks can be solved for the most part using weak
references.  I'm attaching an example from one of my other projects.=20
Because this example runs in a thread and WeakHashMap is not
syncronized, garbage collected listeners' WeakReferences are not
removed.  This is not a perfect example.  I'm trading a small memory
leak for a potential larger one.  There are other methods.  We could
wrap the WeakHashMap and make is serializable.  We could use also do
some things with the ReferenceQueue as well.

Anyway, just a few thoughts.  A good reference is=20

http://www.javaworld.com/javatips/jw-javatip79_p.html


Thanks,
--=20
Philip A. Chapman