Re: Questions

[Gleef <gleef capital net>]

On Mon, 22 Jun 1998, David [iso-8859-1] Martínez Oliveira wrote:
> First of all sorry for my poor english and if I am asking in the bad place,
> I am new on this and I don't know how this work.

Welcome!:-)


> I get subscribed to this maillist and I had read a lot of interesting
> messages. I have some questions and I will be very gratefull if you can
> answer their.

I will do my best.


> I want to know what is ORBit?. Is it an CORBA-ORB? Can I get some version
> of it?.

ORBit is intended to be a CORBA-ORB.  It is currently under development.
If by 'version of it' you mean a working version of it, sorry, it's not
complete yet.  If you mean to ask if you can see the sourcecode, as far as
I know, the only place it can be found is at Jim Pick's gnome snapshot
site:  ftp://ftp.jimpick.com/pub/gnome/snap/ORBit.  Hopefully, the people
with control over the CVS and FTP sites will soon allow for better access
to the development tree.


> I had development a system that I can EDMA, and mainly it is similar to COM
> or SOM system. I had been asking to many people in order to get some
> feedback about it, some comment. I will like to get some feedback from the
> people of this maillist, because I think that you are working in those
> systems. Many people with I had told don't are interesting in componentware
> object-oriented systems.

Yes, we are interested in object-oriented component systems.  GNOME is
pretty much set on CORBA, as opposed to COM or other component models, but
that does not mean that there aren't issues regarding other component
systems that aren't relevant here.

I can't give you much feedback on EDMA, since I hadn't heard of it before
your post.  From looking at the README file in the source, it is hard to
tell exaclty what it does.  From what I can tell, it looks like a library
to allow programs on a Linux or Windows box to talk to each other in a
language independant fashion, which is essentially the goal of CORBA, but
in a narrower scope.

I am interested to hear more about EDMA.  Is it something to go on top of
a CORBA or COM implementation, or does it serve the same purpose?  Does it
handle network communications, or is it only between programs on the same
machine?  

 
> I don't know where ask about this and I think that this is a good place for
> this. Any reference to another places where I will get some feedback will
> be wellcome.

Whether or not this is a good place for this discussion partially depends
on what it is you are looking for.  On one hand, I suspect that EDMA as a
whole would not fit well with GNOME.  On the other hand, it is clear that
you have put in a lot of work and research into component programming, and
ideas and possibly source code you developed working on EDMA might be of
great use here.

As far as mailing lists go, this list is for discussion on the
implementation of components in GNOME.  For the actual ORBit development
list, subscribe at orbit-list-request@cuc.edu.

If, on the other hand, you are looking for someplace to discuss EDMA, and
its place in the Linux scheme of things, I would suggest starting up an
EDMA mailing list using majordomo or a similar package, and inviting
people there.


> I had a bunary GNU/Linux distribution avaliable from:
> 
> http://wgpi.tsc.uvigo.es/~dyc/EDMASite
>
> (select download and then GNU/Linux version)

One suggestion, get rid of the 'usr/local/' at the top of the tree in the
tarball.  If you started the tarball with 'EDMABeta03r1/' it will be
easier for people to place it where they want it.

 
> I hope to get the LGPLed sources avaliable very soon. The distribution have
> some simple examples on how the system works.

LGPL definately looks like the way to go for EDMA, particularly if you
want anyone on the Windows 95 end to touch it.


> The system allows to implement a certain class of dynamical multiple
> inheritance, usefull in adding mix-in classes at run-time to change object
> behaivors.

If I recall correctly, there was a lot of discussion recently on how to
properly implement multiple inheritance in CORBA.  Your input could be
quite useful.  If and when you subscribe there, you might want to check
the list archive to see what exactly was discussed.


Best of Luck,
-Gleef