Re: [gdome]RFC: Perl libgdome wrapper

[Tobias Peters <t-peters gmx de>]

On Sun, 14 Oct 2001, T.J. Mather wrote:
> Is there anything you get from using the IDL instead of the
> XML file?  If not it sounds like XML is the way to go, since it contains
> all the implementation specific code.

Differences between IDL file and XML file are:

- IDL file tells you what methods and attribute accessors can throw an
  exception, the XML file does not.

- The IDL file I used contains only the DOM Core API. As far as I can
  see, the XML file contains also some, but not all, event specific
  API. And the XML file contains the implementation specific document
  loading and saving API.

- The type names used are different in both files, and somewhat
  inconsistent in the XML file. (example: '<INTERFACE NAME="Attr" ...',
  but '<METHOD TYPE="GdomeAttr *" ...')


The reason why I do not switch to the XML is: Because the IDL parsing code
works, and switching would mean some rewriting. I did not know about the
XML file when I wrote the first wrapper, otherwise I would have
implemented the parsing code in a way that would have made it easier to
switch to the XML file.

Then, because of the chicken-and-egg problem, I would still have had to
start with an IDL parser, and then switch to an XML parser.

Bye, Tobias