Hello fello monks,

I'm writing Perl bindings for Etk, a toolkit for the new Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (link).

The bindings are now almost completed, and I'm now trying to work on an easy to use API for perl.

As an example, in Etk there are different functions to create a button widget:

Etk_Widget *etk_button_new();
Etk_Widget *etk_button_new_with_label(const char *label);
Etk_Widget *etk_button_new_from_stock(Etk_Stock_Id stock_id); // Etk_S
+tock_Id is an enum
[download]

Here is my translation of this into the perl module:

sub new {
    my $class = shift;
    my $self = $class->SUPER::new();
    if(@_ == 1) { 
        my $thing = shift;
        $self->{WIDGET} = $thing =~ /\D/ ?
            Etk::etk_button_new_with_label($thing) : 
            Etk::etk_button_new_from_stock($thing);
    } else {
        $self->{WIDGET} = Etk::etk_button_new();
    }
    bless($self, $class);
    return $self;
}
[download]

As you can see, I'm trying to stuff different calls inside the same perl method in the spirit of DWIMmery.

Similarly, for example, there's the tree sorting callbacks, it acts differently based on what is passed ar ound. Example:

$tree->Sort( \&sort_func, $asc, $column);

# the same routine but without a coderef works differently

$tree->Sort(NUMERIC, $asc, $column);

# where NUMERIC is a constant, and thus the sorting is done in C to ma
+ke it faster and avoid the roundtrip to
 perl.
[download]

Now, problem is that one of the developers of the Etk library is saying that this is a bit confusing for t he user, so I'm asking you fellow monks:

• Would such an interface be confusing to users? or is this just a C programmer perspective?
• Is it better to implement each function separatly? or is it better to try and be smart about it and allow the user to just throw whatever they want to the function?

P.S: Anyone interested in checking the code out, it's in CVS in the enlightenment reposit ory accessible from the enlightenment website. It's in the proto/etk-perl module (Note that you need to compi le proto/etk for this to work)

Thanx for your comments and replies.

--
Leviathan.

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