Re: Scripting in Gnome

[Jeffrey Stedfast <fejj ximian com>]

On Thu, 2004-02-05 at 14:40, jamie wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-02-05 at 19:31, Geert-Jan Van den Bogaerde wrote:
> > On Thu, 2004-02-05 at 20:16, jamie wrote:
> > > On Thu, 2004-02-05 at 18:45, Sean Middleditch wrote:
> > > > Why would XML work better than IDL?  IDL could just be compiled to
> > > stubs
> > > > that use D-BUS.  The "oh, it's XML, so it's just going to be easier
> > > and
> > > > better" rehashing is getting old.  Especially given detailed claims to
> > > > the contrary by others in this thread.
> > > 
> > > Whether you use XSLT or a built in xml parser, its quicker to develop a
> > > programme to read in and process xml than plain text - okay? Im fed up
> > > repeating this but seeing as you are exceptionally abrasive I thought I
> > > better say it once more in the hope of getting my message across. XML
> > > can also be validated against a schema/dtd and thats handy too for
> > > debugging whether your produced IDL is correct etc.
> > 
> > This argument might have carried some weight if the limiting factor in
> > producing language bindings was the effort of writing the IDL parser for
> > that language. It is not, because parsing IDL is only a very small part
> > of what is involved in writing language bindings, so it's not worth
> > deviating from the established standard of CORBA IDL over.
> 
> 1) You can automate and verify the conversion using XSLT - its gotta be
> a lot quicker than writing a parser, performing error checking and doing
> the conversion.

except that said parser already exists and works. using xml doesn't mean
you don't have to still write a parser/validator. libxml only gives you
a lexer, you still have to "parse" it and validate that the definition
makes sense (xml dtd's can't do this, they can only validate that the
xml follows the xml format definition)

> 
> 2) I was only suggesting deviating if bonobo no longer became dependant
> on corba and therefore there was no longer a strong case for using IDL.

I don't really see why you are so against corba, what about it is so
fundamentally slow? you also realise that orbit2 can do in-proc
communication as well as out-of-proc, yes?

I will agree that the c bindings, at least, are painful to use... but
that is my only complaint. I haven't noticed any real slowness.

and as Jody said somewhere earlier in this thread, speed isn't really a
concern wrt scriptability anyway, as long as it is reasonable (and I
don't think anyone can argue that orbit2's speed isn't reasonable).

> 
> jamie.
>  
> > 
> > Geert-Jan
> > 
> 
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