Bonobo Q. (was Re: The future of GNOME.)

[carguin iname com]

On Mon, 8 Mar 1999, Miguel de Icaza wrote:

> Bonobo, on the other hand provides a framework for creating compound
> documents from various GNOME applications.

I've been playing around with an application idea, but perhaps I better
mention it now in case you've already started on it as part of Bonobo. I
wanted to throw together something that would basically wrap around
scripts, and embed their output in documents using Bonobo. 

For example, to put a graph in my document, I just start up this app, set
the output option to "postscript", and then type in the script I would
need to get gnuplot to generate postscript output to stdout. 

Likewise, if I want to report how long it takes to compile the Linux
kernel, I could set the output option to "text" and write a script to
compile the kernel and time it. If 10 years down the line anybody ask me
where I got my figures, I can just pull up the document and show them the
script.:)

This would enable all of the non-Gnome apps out there to still be
easily useful. You could even design plug-ins for certain apps to make
them more convient, like a Gnuplot plugin that prompted for the ranges and
formulas instead of having you write the script. 

So, is this something you've already done (or are planning on)? It's about
three down on my TODO-stack, so it'll be awhile before I would start on it
anyway. In fact, if anybody else wants to try it, feel free.

Before anybody ask me... *yes*, I realize the security issues this would
create. Sure, you could create a document with a "rm ~/*" script in it 
and give it to someone. I'm working on that...

--
Chris Arguin                 | "...All we had were Zeros and Ones -- And 
CArguin@iname.com            |  sometimes we didn't even have Ones."
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