Re:component architecture

["John D. Heintz" <jheintz ripple dyn ml org>]

hello all,

I have been thinking about what Tom Tromey said on this topic in his
message at
http://www.gnome.org/mailing-lists/archives/gnome-components-list/1998-February/0022.html


I would suggest that the "component architecture" that is being worked
towards now could be set up as a direct competitor to the Evil Empires COM
model.

I am right now doing Java programming and because of implementation
constraints am forced to integrate with COM a fair amount.  Despite being
rediculously hard and buggy, I am grudgingly becoming aware of COM good
points.  

The biggest benefits I see include language independece and simple
reference of components from the COM registry.

Disclaimer:  I really don't like Evil Empire, so please no flames for pro
MS comments.  i really think that some of the technical aspects of COM are
simply really easy and useful. 

In Tom's message referenced above, he makes four points about how he sees
gnome moving forward as a comonent architecture.

1. Write core code and apps.
Well, this is pretty much the same on both platforms.

2. Use CORBA to let apps talk to each other in a coarse-grained way.
This is like the "Automation Server" (or "ActiveX dll") in COM speak.  For
example, Excell exports most of its functionality this way.

3. Work on a component/plugin model.
This is like a VB control or ActiveX control.  I think this is what people
are talking about doing to the GTK ui widgets. Even futher than this
though, a UI component built in Python for instance could be placed in a
panel with a plugin model with the same ease.  People all over the place
love VB because it is easy, this is why.

4. Work on a compound document model.
I don't have clear examples of this yet, but it does seem to be the most
complicated and possibly the most benefitial.


Thanks for reading this far! 

John Heintz

PS - Is the CORBA/component model stuff planned on being completely
independent from the desktop manager aspect of GNOME?  A component
architecture would be very useful for somethings without having any gui
associated at all.