[Gnu3dkit-dev] Strings and parameter lists

[Philippe C . D . Robert]

Hi,

working on the renderer API I encounter some problem/issues with 
strinsgs. In RenderMan everything is handled via C strings (tokens), 
back in the NEXTSTEP days this would have been used directly 'as is'. 
Now since OpenStep the use of NSString is recommended and C strings are 
more or less banned from the API although this imposes some overhead. 
My problem now is how to map the RenderMan C interface to a proper 
G3DRenderer Objective-C interface: should we use plain C strings or 
NSStrings?

Moreover RenderMan uses parameter lists in many places which could be 
handled either via variable argument lists or NSDictionary objects. I'd 
prefer to use the latter (from an OO perspective), but I'd like to hear 
your opinion on that as well before I go on here.

So the main question here is probably whether we want to design a pure 
Objective-C API or mix it with a C interface. Again, I'd choose the 
Objective-C approach, but...

What do you think?

-Phil
--
Philippe C.D. Robert
http://www.nice.ch/~phip