IMRs again (was Re: Comments on the baboon plugin spec)

[Felix Bellaby <felix pooh u-net com>]

Phil Dawes writes:
 > I still think that this functionality is part of corba though. All the
 > top corba vendors support shared library objects - the spec even
 > mentions them. 
 > 
 > If orbit is to support persistent objects activated transparently from
 > shared libraries then it must have a bootstrapping
 > activation/deactivation API embedded in the shared library. I believe
 > this is exactly what you have defined in the gnome-plugin specification.

Phil is exactly right here. CORBA was designed to implement the OMG 
object model. Hidden implementations are the sine qua non of object
models. How can GNOME miss this point ?

The IMR will NEVER be specified by OMG because that would break the 
object model itself!! The IMR is essential so that the ORB knows the 
implementations it is hiding from the object clients!!

One advantage of plug-ins defined as CORBA objects is the language
independence of IDL. Put together a means of accessing IDL dynamically 
from guile and every user can use every plug-in from within every
gnome app without the app programmer knowing anything about it. Put 
together a decent IMR and the user does not even have to install the 
plug-in: the ORB can fetch it when it is needed.

The visiblity of implementations has left us with huge collections of
modules for all our interpreted languages (python, perl, etc.). Hide
the implementations behind the ORB and you only need one module:
the module to access IDL!!

Felix