[fpc-pascal] 2.1.1 new protected

[Michael Van Canneyt]

On Mon, 14 Aug 2006, Martin Schreiber wrote:

> On Sunday 13 August 2006 13.27, Marco van de Voort wrote:
>>> It is ugly, produces warnings and is possibly forbidden in FPC 2.1.1 (I
>>> don't know). A more elegant solution would be to have something like
>>> 'friend units' where protected class members are visible:
>>
>> I wonder what the use of making a private/public/protected distinction is
>> in the first place, if USES'ing units can override it at will.
>>
>
> In a tool library:
>
> public -> interface for the library users, use it without knowledge of the
> internals.
>
> protected -> interface for the library developers, use it if you know what you
> do. Use strict protected if you want to secure encapsulate things.
>
> private -> secure encapsulated class items.
>
> Note that I had to use 'cracker classes' in MSEgui to access private FPC class
> items to implement workarounds...
> I must repeat:
> It is not possible to develop a complex system in a clean single class
> hierarchy, especially not if you use foreign units which are not under your
> control . I know it because I tried it...

No. It just means the classes are designed wrong.

If you need to access directly private class fields, I think there are serious 
design flaws in your code.

Michael.