Re: Getting the iid of a component for activation?

[Michael Meeks <michael helixcode com>]

Hi Martin,

On 1 Dec 2000, Martin Baulig wrote:
> > So; some people tell me that most apps have no new interfaces, so  
> > if you want to create a simple calculator app with a built in
> > minesweeper game, you _have_ to hardcode the IID's unless you add
> > magic new interfaces to query on.
> 
> I still think that it's wrong to hardcode the IID - this would make it
> impossible to replace the component by another minesweeper game.

        Of course; perhaps you don't understand what I mean by hardcoding;
by hardcoding I mean 'tieing to a single component instance' this can be  
done by having a tag in your AppConfig file that allows you to change this
easily if you so wish. I am not advocating sticking massive raw strings in
around the place; this seems to be a fairly fundamental mis-communication 
- why didn't I think of it before as a source of misunderstanding.

> >         This whole thing is laughable.
>
> With OAF, you query for the _capability_ or a component and _not_ for 
> its name.

        But; there are millions of components that only implement standard
interfaces, eg. 200 different games, all just exposing Control.

> So IMHO the correct thing to add an attribute to gnomine's oafinfo 
> file and then to do an oaf_query() for this attribute.
  
        So you propose having attributes:
  
        <oaf_attribute name="thisisahack"
         type="string" value="this_game_is_first">

        And then doing a query for this magic attribute ? so for a person
to configure which game they want in their shell instead of changing the  
config for that program, they have to go and fiddle with global system    
capability descriptions ? I'm confused.                                  
            
        I would prefer:
  
        oaf_activate ("OAFIID:GNOME_Games_Minesweeper")
  
        or whatever.
  
        Regards,
  
                Michael.

-- 
 mmeeks gnu org  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot