(fwd) Re: scripting with bonobo

["Dirk-Jan C. Binnema" <bulkmail dds nl>]

On Mon Jun 26, 2000 at 09:47:46AM -0400, Michael Meeks wrote:
> 
 
> 	Do you have complete listings of the ActiveScript API ? it would
> be great to code up a bonobo equivalent.

It's in the MSDN, you can find it at 
http://msdn.microsoft.com/scripting/hosting/iactivescript/reference.htm

Note that these are not all - there are a *lot* of interfaces if you
include all the interfaces to support debugging.  

Also note the MS habit of packaging could ideas in ugly interfaces.

> > Now, the interesting thing is of course how to get application
> > specific stuff in your scripting environment, e.g. your 'Sheet'-object.
> > To do that, we can add another method to EmbeddableLanguage:
> > 
> > 	void add_object ( in Unknown unk, in string known_as );
> 
> 	How does MS do that ? do they collect objects from some sort of
> global type database ? perhaps we should be doing this, generating it from
> our idl.

They use the much-hated IDispatch, which allows for runtime
discovery. We could use DII/DSI; something like the ORBit bindings for Python and Perl
do - parse some IDL file. 

> > On the Host side, an application must be able to serve it's 'object
> > model' as a Bonobo (CORBA) object. This may not be trivial for all
> > apps.
> 
> 	Sure; however the essence of bonobo's client wrappers is to try
> and make everything _extremely_ easy for the programmer, so if you have
> any ideas about how to do this, do let me know.

Yes. There's overlap with Automation here - you'll probably want to
expose the same object model both inside the app (scripting) and
outside the app (automation). And of course keep consistency - you
don't want 'document.writer' in one app and 'currentdoc.author' in
nother.

> > So, do any of you think this is useful for application scripting in the
> > Bonobo era? If so, I could write down some more complete IDL interfaces.
> 
> 	Yes indeed, please do. Make a little test program, perhaps in
> samples/script and get a testbed working if you can; do send patches to
> the list as and when you hit milestones.

Yup. I'll try do write some stuff. Don't expect anything tomorrow,
though...

Cheers,
	Dirk-Jan.


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          Dirk-Jan C. Binnema <djcb@dds.nl> 
           http://www.casema.net/~devnull
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