At 9:56 PM -0800 4/1/99, Chris Antos wrote:
>i hope it's clear that since the objects were not opaque it is a major
>problem to make them opaque now. so far, Palm has been very good about
>keeping structs binary compatible for backwards compatibility.
We want to encourage people to start thinking of them as opaque, so we need
a way to transition.
One thing we could do is split out the private types into seperate header
files, but still distribute them. That way apps that were depending on the
secret stuff could still work with very minor updates (including the new
file). This way new app writers wouldn't be tempted to simply use the
structs directly just because they can see them.
During the transition we'd expect a lot of feedback about missing APIs, and
we'd naturally have to add them.
That said, you *should* expect changes to some of the low level types in
upcoming OS releases. It's sometimes impossible to expand the OS without
also expanding the OS's structures. e.g. you've got to store greyscale
information *somewhere*, which means growing structures.
--Bob
