Mac Forum / Programming / CodeWarrior / January 2004

Something that's never come up for me before, and neither Inside Mac nor
thae Carbon docs have anything to say about it (as far as I've been able
to spot):

Is it kosher to call the various "manager" initializations (InitGraf(),
InitFonts(), InitWhateverManager(), and so on) multiple times?

I'm banging away at porting a small Sockets-based library (currently
Linux/Windows targeted) to MacOS 8.1-9.x/Carbon and OpenTransport (But
have no interest whatsoever in trying to target "native" X - besides, it
should work there fine already, or with minimal changes), and I need to
be sure that certain managers (OpenTransport and Thread Manager, in
particular, maybe some others that I haven't yet realized will be
needed) have been properly initialized. But without calling the init
routines for itself, I can't spot any way for this library to be
absolutely certain that the ones it needs to use have been initialized,
and/or they've been done in the right order. (As in the old restriction
that says InitWindows() needs to be called after InitGraf(), InitFonts()
has to be called after calling InitGraf() and InitWindows(), and
InitDialogs() has to be called after calling all of the above, and
similar)

At the same time, I'd prefer to avoid, if possible, the concept of "To
use this library, you must first call InitX(), then InitY(), then
InitZ(), and then finally, call InitMyLibrary()". I'd greatly prefer the
simplicity of "slap a call to InitMyLibrary() into your program's
initialization, and you're good to go". No muss, no fuss, no bother, and
no weird "rules" about how it gets done. Just "call this routine
sometime before you try to use any of the other routines."

As far as I've been able to determine, there is nothing in any
documentation that I know about which addresses the concept of multiple
calls to the various "Init____()" routines and how they might be
certifiable Bad Things(TM).

Or does it matter? Perhaps I should just go with the concept of "My
Init() has been called. Make no assumptions - Init everything I need,
and let the caller worry about whether the items it needs have been
initialized"? Or by doing so, am I risking having the whole thing
explode in my face if/when I issue a call to one of the Inits that has
already been called (without my knowledge) someplace else? As I said,
Inside Mac and the Carbon docs don't seem to address this issue. Nor
does any code (Sample or production) that I've seen.

Any thoughts from folks out there in Internetville?