library/README.libres

                        WINElib resources: a proposal

One of the current issues with WINElib is the inadequate support for accessing
resources by name.  I propose the following technique (which I have already
begun to implement) to allow this:

   An internal table of resource entries is provided along with a registering
   function for adding a resource to this table.  'winerc' should construct
   *.c files much the same way as it does now with the inclusion of a single
   static 'constructor' function that registers the associated resources with
   the internal mechanism like so:

      static void DoIt() __attribute__ ((constructor));
      static void DoIt()
      {
        LIBRES_RegisterResource(hello3_MENU_MAIN__bytes,
                                sizeof(hello3_MENU_MAIN__bytes),
                                "MAIN",
                                RT_MENU);
        LIBRES_RegisterResource(hello3_DIALOG_DIADEMO__bytes,
                                sizeof(hello3_DIALOG_DIADEMO__bytes),
                                "DIADEMO",
                                RT_DIALOG);
           ... etc. ...
      }

   The internal table can then be searched for the resource by name.

The only potential drawback I've determined so far is this technique's
reliance on gcc's 'constructor' attribute, which disallows compilation with
some other compiler.  However, I'm guessing that WINE is already heavily
dependent on gcc, so this is probably not too much of a factor.

Any comments/suggestions/criticisms will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
--Jim