Re: org.gnome.Application DBus Interface

[Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo gnome-db org>]

On Tue, 2007-08-14 at 17:15 -0500, Diego Escalante Urrelo wrote:
> 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.
> 
cool, I'm not alone :-)

Although I'm thinking that we might need also a ListActions method, to
retrieve the list of actions supported by the application.
-- 
Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo gnome-db org>