Re: org.gnome.Application DBus Interface

["Diego Escalante Urrelo" <diegoe gnome org>]

On 8/14/07, Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo gnome-db org> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 2007-08-13 at 21:01 +0100, Alex Jones wrote:
> > (It seems some of my mail is going missing. This will screw up the
> > threading but whatever.)
> >
> > Rodrigo Moya wrote:
> > > On Fri, 2007-08-10 at 17:45 +0100, Alex Jones wrote:
> > > > Hi list
> > > >
> > > > the org.gnome.Application DBus interface provides a way for
> > > applications
> > > > to expose common application functionality in a standardised way.
> > > >
> > > sounds pretty good... it would indeed be very useful to start using
> > > this
> > > for apps to export actions, so, what about adding a:
> > >
> > > InvokeAction (action_name, arguments)
> > >
> > > method? That way, we could use this interface for calling actions (not
> > > based on (complicated) URIs) on the app. Rhythmbox could just have
> > > several actions, like Play/Pause/Volume up-down/etc
> > >
> > > That would be very useful (as we tried to do on the CORBA days) for
> > > automation
> >
> > Actually what is a better solution here is to use a different interface,
> > such as the common media player interface described here:
> > <http://wiki.xmms2.xmms.se/index.php/Media_Player_Interfaces>. That way,
> > making Rhythmbox "pause" becomes a case of calling
> > (org.gnome.MediaPlayer).Pause() rather than
> > (org.gnome.Application).InvokeAction("Pause")
> >
> yeah, might be better, but in this case you will end up with lots of
> interfaces. Think when apps start doing heavy use of this, to
> communicate with app A you need the A interface, the B interface for app
> B, etc.
>
> For the most common cases (media player, file manager), of course it
> might make sense, but I was thinking of this as a way to invoke actions
> on *all* apps (that support it, of course), rather than just a media
> player or some specific app.

(Just thinking out loud, correct me if I'm wrong)

It's like having:
set_size
get_size
set_text
get_text
set_whatever
get_whatever
...

VS

set_prop
get_prop

You can do your life easier with the _prop combo, like:
set_prop(prop_var, prop_val)

In my humble understanding, that's easier to code and understand than:
set_$(prop_var)(prop_val)

I would say go go InvokeAction.

Diego