[Lazarus] IUnknown and reference counting

[Hans-Peter Diettrich]

Xiangrong Fang schrieb:
> As a matter of fact, this is what confused me the most.  In my previous 
> experience, e.g. with java or php, I don't care about COM or CORBA, 
> interface to me is just another way to implement abstract method for 
> languages that do not support multiple inheritance. Isn't that the case?

COM and CORBA are not requirements for using interfaces in Delphi/FPC. 
These models become important only when an interfaced object is 
*created* by one process for *use* by an different process, e.g. when 
you run Word and want to access its documents from your own program. Or 
when you embed an ActiveX control into your program, and want to 
communicate with it in some special way (not using the TWinControl 
methods). In such a scenario you'll have to add much more code, in order 
to make such distributed processing work (CoInitialize...).

DoDi