Question to Niko's source

[Peter Müller]

Hi!
I read something in Niko's source, what I don't understand:

Code: Select all

00281 {
00282         IGUIButton* button = new CGUIButton(this, parent ? parent : this, id, rectangle);
00283         if (text)
00284                 button->setText(text);
00285         button->drop();
00286         return button;
00287 }

Why is he returning an dropped value?

[Celhtar]

I guess for reference counting issues, makes the final drop() at clean-up really deallocate the button

[Tyn]

Yeah, I was thinking that too. That must be why you can't call a drop() for individual nodes, maybe the individual drop() just stores the fact that it needs to be dealloc'ed when the device is eventually dropped. It would explain a lot I think.

[jox]

Reference counted objects (subclasses of IUnknown) always start with a count of 1.

Gui elements are also being grabbed by their parent (which is in this case the GUIEnvironment itself if you don't specify one). This increments the reference counter to 2.

The mysterious drop brings it back to 1.

They finally get destroyed (death dropped) in the destructor of IGUIElement.