Re: Bonobo and Mono C#

[Michael Meeks <michael ximian com>]

Hi Mikkel,

On Sat, 2003-08-02 at 20:20, Mikkel Kruse Johnsen wrote:
> I have been working on wrapping Bonobo in C# and have simple embedding
> of Controls into my Mono program working.

	Sounds nice.

> But a quick talk with Migual, made me realize that a wrapped Bonobo is
> not a good solution because ORBit is working behind the scenes. So
> making a Component with a self defined interface will be difficult
> because C stubs has to be defined and then delegates have to be made
> into the C# code. Adding a interface will also has to be done with
> "bonobo_object_add_interface" instead of simple inherit from the
> interface.

	Right; however with BonoboObjectForeign in the latest libbonobo - we
get over this problem for the python binding.

	I think it's prolly best to look at the really nice python binding
before going to far with this - to copy what they do; although python
has the advantage of being very late-bound that C# doesn't.

> So Im basically looking at rewriting Bonobo in C# using
> Remoting.Corba, is there anyone who has been thinking about this,
> started on it or has some good ideas or want to help ?

	I wouldn't re-write all of Bonobo - I would use BonoboObjectForeign;
and I would focus on the CORBA binding first - particularly because this
can be quite a sweet way to implement interfaces for code that can be
used by any Java runtime as well as Mono.

	I would however focus on the in-proc CORBA bridge - best exemplified by
Python; (code in Gnome CVS, module 'gnome-python/pyorbit': 5500 lines of
a ~complete CORBA binding with very fast, nice in-proc C <-> Python <->
Mono ;-> bindings). Also, orbit c++ (Gnome CVS module 'orbitcpp') has an
IDL compiler plugin that generated C++ stubs/skels for C++ - you'd want
to write a backend for Mono that could do that too I think.

> What about you Michael are you thinking about a Bonobo C#
> implementation or is C# not your thing :-)

	I love C#, I'll love it more when there is a stable Gtk# and we can
reliably write/deploy/maintain C# components for Gnome :-) I look
forward to that being the case.

	I'm most happy to help hold your hand on this if you are willing to put
the work in though - grab me on irc.gimp.org #michael, in GMT timezone
if you need more help.

	Regards,

		Michael.

-- 
 michael ximian com  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot