Re: GNOME 2.8: Scripting

[James Henstridge <james daa com au>]

On 29/03/04 21:57, Rodrigo Moya wrote:

> On Mon, 2004-03-29 at 21:05 +0800, James Henstridge wrote:
>  
>
> > The main problem with the interface you list above is that it is 
> > extremely limited.  The BonoboApplication interface seems to only 
> > provide a collection of functions you can invoke on the application.
> >
> >    
> right, but those functions can contain any kind of arguments / return
> any kind of type (any CORBA type), which means you can include
> context-specific arguments to make, for instance, different calls
> associated with a given object.
>  
I know you can do things like this (after all, that's how GObject and 
the CORBA C mapping are done), but it does mean that you end up 
providing a procedural interface even if the target scripting language 
can support something better.  And for the majority of non-trivial 
applications, the model you want to manipulate is object oriented.


> > This isn't really going to be sufficient for larger applications where 
> > you would probably want to expose multiple objects (eg. gnumeric might 
> > provide operations you can invoke on each sheet and/or workbook you have 
> > open, and maybe other operations you can invoke on cells or ranges).
> >
> > Rather than having a toy scripting interface for simple apps and a 
> > different one for serious apps, a single API would be preferable.
> >
> >    
> what else do you propose then? Extend BonoboApplication, use
> at-spi, ...?
>  
For in-process scripting, GObject with appropriate introspection info 
would probably work pretty well.  For out-of-process use, custom CORBA 
interfaces work pretty well, although I realise that they are a pain to 
implement in C.

Without knowing what the Accessible::Document interface would look like, 
I can't say whether at-spi would be any better or worse.  The current 
interfaces appear to only mirror the GUI (view) portion of an app, which 
is of limited use for scripting.

There are probably other options available too.  My point is that 
telling people to use one interface for scripting small programs, and a 
completely different API for scripting their larger office programs 
seems a bit confusing.

James.

--
Email: james daa com au
WWW:   http://www.daa.com.au/~james/