Re: Scripting in Gnome

[jamie <jamiemcc blueyonder co uk>]

On Thu, 2004-02-05 at 16:16, Sean Middleditch wrote:

> 
> What makes you think D-Bus is any faster than CORBA?  We already have
> one backend that does everything we need it to already, so why do we
> need alternatives?  What advantages do we get for all that extra
> development time and complexity?  What about the fact that apps would
> then no longer inter-operate because some would use backend A and others
> use backend B?
> 
The fact that slow bloated KDE thought the Corba implementation in Gnome
was slow and heavy on memory usage and hence decided not to use it
speaks for itself.

Most people are looking to unify the desktops using D-Bus so why not
have bonobo make use of it? If bonobo wont use it then some other object
layer will and that would probably end up marginalising bonobo.


>  
> > I suggest XMl as a high level wrapper for a high level interface. If you
> > want to bypass the higher level and use a lower level interface like IDL
> > then that should be fine too.
> 
> Your fetish for XML is getting almost humorous.  ;-)

Why do you have a problem with consistency? Is not making things more
consistent a good thing? Don't you think Ms coverting its office formats
into xml is a good thing?


>   Nothing about XML
> makes it "higher level" than IDL.  XML is basically nothing more than a
> low-level specification for a file syntax.

I meant another level that sat on top rather than "higher" as in easier.

>   Using XML would require you
> to write a new document type for IDL-ish purposes, implement tools to
> duplicate what IDL already does, etc.  That time you'll waste for no
> reason, both your time and the time of the programmers who have to learn
> this new XML document type and tools.  XML isn't necessarily a bad tool
> for the job (I use it for precisely this purpose in AweMUD), but it just
> isn't as appropriate as the tool GNOME already has.

There would be little difference between the two in terms of layout only
you could make use of XSLT with the XML version.

> 
> Unless there is a very specific reason to duplicate/reimplement that
> work, quit worrying about whether it's XML or not and just use what we
> already have, what programmers are already familiar with, and what has
> been designed specifically for the task at hand.

Again I beleive consistency to be a good thing and worth a little extra
work. If its a huge amount of work okay fair enough but lets see if it
is first.

jamie.