[cairo] reference counting vs garbage collection

[Carl Worth]

On Tue, 04 Jan 2005 15:23:36 -0800, Keith Packard wrote:
> I like the cairo_surface_close idea quite a lot; if there aren't huge 
> complaints, I will look into implementing it.

I've just gone back through the whole thread again, and I do like this
idea much more than a callback-based approach. So, please take a shot
at an implementation.

As for naming, I don't like "close" in the absence of any matching
"open".

It seems that any code that would be calling cairo_surface_close would
immediately be following it up with cairo_surface_destroy, (since the
surface is useless after that). And letting the user hold on to a
useless object doesn't seem like a feature to me.

So, why don't we merge the close functionality into "destroy"?

If we did that, then I think all we'd need is a new function to
replace current calls to surface_destroy that really just want to
release a reference. Perhaps cairo_surface_unreference?

Hey, look at that, two pairs of balanced calls:

	cairo_surface_create
	cairo_surface_reference
	cairo_surface_unreference
	cairo_surface_destroy

That seems not undesirable.

-Carl