Re: import/export interface for Bonobo

[Michael Meeks <michael helixcode com>]

On 17 May 2000, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> So what you're saying is that the available output types can change
> dynamically. I think you are actually right; for instance, I can
> imagine a component that could read, write and display both PostScript
> and PDF but could not convert between them. So it's clear that dynamic
> query for available output types is useful.

	So it would seem good then, to use OAF for determining input
types, and a query interface to determine possible output types, since
this will require no replication of information.

	I propopse then that we have 2 functions on Stream;

	StringList query_types ();
	void       set_type (in String type);

	Should one not set the type, then the default type [ the first
element of the query ] will be given you. Otherwise one can set the type
to any of the returned query_types. Similarly on sending data to the
stream, any of the supported_mime_types can be used. The format of the
string should be an expandable ':' delimited array of strings, with the
first element being the MIME type, the C API will hide this complexity
until it is needed in future.

	Comments ?

		Michgael.

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