Re: [Evolution-hackers] work in progress white-paper on extensions

[Michael Meeks <michael ximian com>]

Hi Michael,

On Fri, 2004-04-02 at 18:52 +0800, Not Zed wrote:
> > 	Of course - were I to believe that you actually understood what
> > CORBA/Bonobo will do for you / what it's good at - I'd be most happy for
> > you to go and re-invent big chunks of it in yet-another-way, requiring
> > yet-another-binding.
> 
> So what will it do for me, and just what is it good at?

	Well - there are only really 2 nice thing about it is the type
introspection stuff. Which allows you to write in C, using recursive C
types (defined in IDL I admit) - and allows those methods to be remotely
introspected by dynamic languages a-la Python. The other nice thing is
that BonoboObject should make adding methods to an interface extremely
simple in C. Oh, and I guess finally - since it's thread-safe, you can
(presumably) add camel interfaces without over-much problem.

> It certainly solves problems, but many don't seem to be ones we're after
> having solved, or that map well to our application?

	Well - it doesn't solve the 'plugin' problem - there is still plenty
of work that needs doing there along the lines you outlined; it would just be
a pity to re-invent all the introspection / invocation stuff I guess. As you
say, there are plenty of problems with it :-) such as reference counting etc.
but most of those can be binned / ignored by a careful user.

	Regards,

		Michael.