Re: Plans for 2.8 - GNOME Managed Language Services?

[Ryan McDougall <ryan mcdougall telusplanet net>]

On Fri, 2004-03-26 at 18:07 -0800, aigiskos wrote:
> So, is this the proposal?
> 
>      *Platform: GNOME C libraries + Classpath 
>
>      *Runtime: GObject and CLI (from Mono; IKVM to
> allow easy Java usage)
>      *Desktop: C, C++, Java, Python, etc (but not
> Mono?)
>      *3rd party apps: whatever language they feel
> like.


Runtime: ECMA Common Language Runtime
Type system: GObject and/or ECMA Common Language Interface
Core library: C/GTK+
Application Library: anything that supports CLI, GTK# is an example.

> 
> I guess my confusion is whether we're talking about
> the platform or the desktop level (and where does the
> runtime come into it?).  It does seem beneficial to
> limit the platform to C (with maybe one other
> language-- Python? Java?).

You have a point: clearly defining what we want is a good idea. :)

> 
> Lastly, does any of this matter if we have nice
> language bindings, as Murray is putting together?
> 

Language bindings are good, but there are two problems: 
1. They have to be manually done. This allows writers to hand tune the
bindings to work well using native semantics, but it is still a time
consuming process that has to be redone each version of GTK+.
2. Passing type/objects requires between languages requires
unsatisfactory translation schemes such as CORBA/Bonobo, and has
generally not brought the Network Object Model into GNOME.

Cheers,
Ryan