ANNOUNCE - graphics package

[Joachim Durchholz]

Taavi Talvik wrote:
> 
> It would be nice if this deallocation of external resources is transparent
> - i.e. if widget process just terminates (by crashing, or just finishing
> it's work without cleaning up resources), some time garbage collection
> kicks in and garbage collector informs somehow, that external resources
> can also be freed.

It's generally accepted that resource deallocation shouldn't be tied to 
automatic garbage collection. Peter-Henry Mander already nicely summed 
that up for X windows, but it's a more general principle: if any 
resource has constraints on when it should be released, releasing it 
during garbage collection is usually a bad idea (except as a stopgab 
measure). This applies not just to windows but also to file handles (on 
systems where they are a limited resource or where opening a file will 
always lock it, such as Windows), hardware locks, Internet connections, 
and what-have-you.

Regards,
Jo
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