Re: component architecture

[Tom Tromey <tromey creche cygnus com>]

John> My interpretation of what you suggest:
John>  - register an editor as a Corba service/component/object, 

Yes.

John>  - register an event manager (that knows about the editor) as a
John> Corba event service,

Sort of.  The event manager is an independent creature.  If the editor
wants to generate or listen to events, it would contact the event
manager.

John>  - and create something (like a file manager) to trigger events
John> on the event manager to signal file editing.

No.  Events are notifications of state change, and nothing more.  That
is, they are one-way affairs -- you post an event, and then forget
about it.

In order to ask for an edit, or something like that, you have to do
something else.  My suggestion was to use the file's type (the MIME
type, since it is well-known, a standard, etc, etc) to find the
appropriate editor object.  This search would be conducted by looking
through at the CORBA name service.


John> Q1) Is the purpose of this prototype the editor, or the event
John> manager?

Yeah, it was a mistake to mention both of those in the same breath.
Basically, I think we should do both.

John> I think both are valid things to prototype, but I would assume
John> we want to prototype the editor as a Corba service first, then
John> add the additional indirection of the event manager. Right?

Not necessarily.  They are largely independent.

John> I thought that MIME was a way to get some file to the
John> application that matches it?  Does MIME make any claim for
John> editing vs. running vs. printing vs.  .....?  I guess I am
John> questioning whether MIME is the right way to go.

I'm only suggesting we use MIME types as a way to represent the types
of the files (and other objects we manipulate).  I didn't mean to
suggest anything about MIME in general.

Tom