[PYTHON MATRIX-SIG] A ramble on ofunc's and omath

[Hinsen Konrad]

   Yup, there are plenty of opportunities to build on and improve the basic
   mechanism.  Alot of this depends on how complex the C interface being exported
   is.

Variables and functions are all there is to export; anything else (typedefs,
macros etc.) would have to be exported via header files even in the case
of statically linked C programs.

If something like this is to become an official feature of Python
it would be nice to add a minimum of support to CObjects, even if that
increases the code size too 300 bytes ;-) The aim should be to make
this feature as easy to use as possible and reduce potential
problems to a minimum.

For example, one could have a standard typedef for a structure that
contains the complete C interface to a module. Plus a standard special
name for the variable that holds the C interface (perhaps "__C__"),
and an access function that looks for this variable and retrieves
the pointer. Then add conventions for header files, and the only
difference between this mechanism and acess to a statically linked
module is two lines of code: one for the import, and one to
retrieve the C interface.

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Konrad Hinsen                     | E-Mail: hinsenk@ere.umontreal.ca
Departement de chimie             | Tel.: +1-514-343-6111 ext. 3953
Universite de Montreal            | Fax:  +1-514-343-7586
C.P. 6128, succ. Centre-Ville     | Deutsch/Esperanto/English/Nederlands/
Montreal (QC) H3C 3J7             | Francais (phase experimentale)
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