Potential patent issues

[Don]

BlazingWhitester wrote:
> I spotted some patents that can theaten current DMD implementation.
> Wanted to clarify things.
> 
> http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6185728.pdf - this patent describes 
> method pointers implementation (delegates)

This was obviously a patent aimed at protecting Delphi from VB. It's all 
about the RAD designer: visual connections between GUI elements and 
events has a 1:1 correspondence with code; delegates are used to achieve 
this.

D delegates can store a data pointer to a nested function, or to an 
object. This is rather more general (not an object-oriented feature), 
and doesn't provide a 1:1 correspondence to visuals.
I presume they were only able to satisfy the requirements for novelty 
and non-obviousness, because of the RAD usage. In fact, there doesn't 
seem to be any suggestion that delegates would be used for anything else.
The more general idea of storing a data pointer and a function pointer 
together is simple and obvious, and surely has prior art.