BlazingWhitester wrote:
I spotted some patents that can theaten current DMD implementation.
Wanted to clarify things.
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6185728.pdf - this patent describes
method pointers implementation (delegates)
This was obviously a patent aimed at protecting Delphi from VB. It's all
about the RAD designer: visual connections between GUI elements and
events has a 1:1 correspondence with code; delegates are used to achieve
this.
D delegates can store a data pointer to a nested function, or to an
object. This is rather more general (not an object-oriented feature),
and doesn't provide a 1:1 correspondence to visuals.
I presume they were only able to satisfy the requirements for novelty
and non-obviousness, because of the RAD usage. In fact, there doesn't
seem to be any suggestion that delegates would be used for anything else.
The more general idea of storing a data pointer and a function pointer
together is simple and obvious, and surely has prior art.
