Philosophical question: Overtaking of Reaper's own PreventUIRefresh?

[Meo-Ada Mespotine]

I'm currently working on some functions for Ultraschall-API, who allow making PreventUIRefresh more stable.

Reason is, that if you have a function, which does

reaper.PreventUIRefresh(-1)

and another function who makes

reaper.PreventUIRefresh(1)

after each other, they cancel each other out.
This can be a problem, if you have in your code reaper.PreventUIRefresh(-1) and a Ultraschall-API function reaper.PreventUIRefresh(1). Both want to prevent UI-refresh but in the end, everything in my Ultraschall-API-function will be visible, as it canceled out the PreventUIRefresh from your script.

Now here's the thing: I can overtake this function to manage it fully independent of what you pass to the function as parameter. That means, I overwrite the Reaper-function with my one, which counts fully on its own and tries to prevent this cancellation for better stability.

And here's my question from an ethical and philosophical point: assuming I can pull it off: shall I do it or do you prefer Reaper's own function to be untouched?

[schwa]

This is why PreventUIRefresh() keeps an internal counter. You should always call PreventUIRefresh(1) to initiate and PreventUIRefresh(-1) to end, not the other way around. That will ensure that refresh remains in the prevent state until everyone who called to initiate it has called to end it.

[Meo-Ada Mespotine]

Ah, thanks.

[Meo-Ada Mespotine]

@schwa

Would adding a function like:

reaper.GetCurrentUIRefreshCounter()

possible? So I can check in my functions if I need to use PreventUIRefresh in the first place.

That way, I can prevent possible cancellations, when people first subtract and then add by accident. I just like to make my stuff as rock solid as possible without interfering in the code of scripters.

[schwa]

If some caller initiates the call with -1, that should be considered a bug. It's like a reference count, designed to be used by multiple callers who don't need to know about the existence of the others.

[Meo-Ada Mespotine]

Originally Posted by schwa

If some caller initiates the call with -1, that should be considered a bug. It's like a reference count, designed to be used by multiple callers who don't need to know about the existence of the others.

Sure but I cannot check this happening at all currently so I can not give any feedback to the user of my functions for them to correct it. I can only take care of my own bugs.

Unless I overtake PreventUIRefresh and count an internal counter as well, and if it ever tries to go into negative areas, I throw a Lua-error.

BTW: does PreventUIRefresh check, whether someone tries to go into negative areas currently and prevents that? If not, maybe an error-message or at least no ui-refresh-prevention possible would be good.
So people can not use it wrong, as the first call to PreventUIRefresh(-1) wouldn't prevent UIRefresh at all. That could make coders think about, how to do it correctly rather than continuing the wrong way.

Could break some old scripts though but well...

[schwa]

Our general approach the API is to only lightly check inputs and let bad extensions blow up REAPER. Unless you have a known case of somebody calling this function backwards (the documentation does say "add then remove"), I wouldn't bother changing the internals.

[Meo-Ada Mespotine]

Ok. But nevertheless, a way of getting the current counter would still be helpful for these edgecases. So I can deal with it properly in my functions, even if it's only a problem in a handful of cases.
I spend a lot of time to prevent possible misuses of my functions and I always feel a little brr brr brr, for not having a way to deal with UIRefresh that well.
If I could get the counter, I could deal with it properly.

In the end, it's all about not bothering unsuspecting endusers with unexpected flickerings of their UI just because of edge-cases.

[Meo-Ada Mespotine]

Oh, and are the counters reset after a script finishes? Or can a forgotten PreventUIRefresh(-1) still prevent UI refresh after script is finished?