-An optional name member is associated with a wxVariant. This might be used, for example, in CORBA
-or OLE automation classes, where named parameters are required.
-
-wxVariant is similar to wxExpr and also to wxPropertyValue. However, wxExpr is efficiency-optimized for
-a restricted range of data types, whereas wxVariant is less efficient but more extensible.
-wxPropertyValue may be replaced by wxVariant eventually.
+An optional name member is associated with a wxVariant. This might be used, for example,
+in CORBA or OLE automation classes, where named parameters are required.
+
+Note that as of wxWidgets 2.7.1, wxVariant is \helpref{reference counted}{trefcount}.
+Additionally, the convenience macros {\bf DECLARE\_VARIANT\_OBJECT} and
+{\bf IMPLEMENT\_VARIANT\_OBJECT} were added so that adding (limited) support
+for conversion to and from wxVariant can be very easily implemented without modifying
+either wxVariant or the class to be stored by wxVariant. Since assignment operators
+cannot be declared outside the class, the shift left operators are used like this:
+
+\begin{verbatim}
+ // in the header file
+ DECLARE_VARIANT_OBJECT(MyClass)
+
+ // in the implementation file
+ IMPLMENT_VARIANT_OBJECT(MyClass)
+
+ // in the user code
+ wxVariant variant;
+ MyClass value;
+ variant << value;
+
+ // or
+ value << variant;
+\end{verbatim}
+
+For this to work, MyClass must derive from \helpref{wxObject}{wxobject}, implement
+the \helpref{wxWidgets RTTI system}{runtimeclassoverview}
+and support the assignment operator and equality operator for itself. Ideally, it
+should also be reference counted to make copying operations cheap and fast. This
+can be most easily implemented using the reference counting support offered by
+\helpref{wxObject}{wxobject} itself. By default, wxWidgets already implements
+the shift operator conversion for a few of its drawing related classes:
+
+\begin{verbatim}
+IMPLEMENT_VARIANT_OBJECT(wxColour)
+IMPLEMENT_VARIANT_OBJECT(wxImage)
+IMPLEMENT_VARIANT_OBJECT(wxIcon)
+IMPLEMENT_VARIANT_OBJECT(wxBitmap)
+\end{verbatim}
+
+Note that as of wxWidgets 2.9.0, wxVariantData no longer inherits from wxObject
+and wxVariant no longer uses the type-unsafe wxList class for list
+operations but the type-safe wxVariantList class.