[fpc-pascal] about interface and multiple inheritance

[Marco van de Voort]

In our previous episode, Michael Schnell said:
> > (I don't know how Delphi implements Corba interfaces, it had a own 
> > broker for some time)
> Sorry, but I feel we are loosing  tack of the original focus of this 
> thread: "what is a save replacement of multiple inheritance of classes ? "
> 
>   - Obviously interfaces do this job.
> 
>   - Seemingly this is independent of interfaces doing ref-counting.
> 
>   - Maybe other than with classes, ref-counting interfaces is rather safe.

Or maybe the rules are simpler, that is a matter of opinion/interpretation

> In other words: *language* disregarding external stuff interfaces might 
> *additionally* be useful to handle.

Basic MI like C++ does afaik imply that both sides (that you inherit from)
are a class.  Now the C++ concept of the root class is rather thin, but
that doesn't go for all languages. 

IOW in Delphi speak: interfaces don't have to be implemented by a TObject.

> And hence the questions for me are
>   - how are ref-counting and not ref counting interfaces distinguished 
> when the programmer wants to use either type ? (and does this syntax 
> make sense)

>   - where/how is this clearly (disregarding external stuff interfaces 
> might *additionally* be useful to handle) documented ?

I don't know. I guess Michael and Graeme are the main corba interface
consumers with the observer stuff. Maybe Martin S. uses it too.

I searched a bit in the FPC codebase, and the observers and lnet (in
utils/fppkg/lnet) seem the only places where it is used.  The demo
(fcl-base/examples/dobserver.pp) for observers uses interfaces in the exact
way as you would refcounted interfaces, except of course you need to keep a
reference to the class to release memory.