This is the declaration for the Study::Guts class, the abstract object to which a Study handle points.
This is in a separate header file from Study because only people who are extending the Study class to make their own Studies need to be aware of the details. End users access only methods from the Study class and classes derived from Study, never anything from Study::Guts or its derived classes.
Below is the physical layout of memory for a Study, and which portions are allocated by the client program and which by the binary library code. For binary compatibility, only the side which allocated a piece of memory can access it. Exception: both the client and library side must agree on the virtual function table (VFT) ordering of the client's virtual functions.
* CLIENT SIDE . LIBRARY SIDE
* .
* Study Study::Guts . Study::Guts::GutsRep
* --------------- ------------------ . -------------
* | Study::Guts* | --> | Study::GutsRep* | --> | GutsRep |
* --------------- ------------------ . | |
* ^ | Concrete Guts | . | Other opaque|
* | | class data and | . | stuff |
* =============== | client-side VFT | . | |
* Concrete Study ------------------ . | |
* adds no data . -------------
* members
*
If the concrete Study::Guts class also has an opaque implementation, as it will for concrete Studies provided by the SimTK Core, then the Study author should expose only the data-free handle class derived from Study.