Re: Which ObjC2.0 features are missing in the latest GCC?

[Derek Fawcus]

On Wed, Nov 20, 2019 at 10:52:36AM +0000, David Chisnall wrote:
> Oh, and with ARC, all of the C++ implementations have correct memory 
> management for Objective-C, for free.

While dropping support for GCC does not strike me as a problem,
switching the core implementation to depend upon C++ may well do.

How many developers are comfortable with C++?

I gave up on it a number of years ago, simply because IMO it was
too complex and fragile; basically I viewed it as an engineering
nightmare.

Every project I've seen using it (either public, or commercial)
seem to use a different subset, and it can be difficult to spot
when a mechanism outwith that subset accidentally creeps in.

> Even today, I believe the Cairo back end is still using the 'toy' font 
> APIs and not the ones that integrate with Harfbuzz, so we get quite poor 
> kerning with Cairo and miss some important features.

I noticed that a few years ago.  I'd have thought changing the Cairo
backend to use the real API should be independent of any support for
other backends (xlib, art).

DF