Re: Scaffold, plugins and language independence

[Mikoyan <miko2 pandora be>]

On Mon, 2004-02-09 at 15:51 -0500, John (J5) Palmieri wrote:
> On Mon, 2004-02-09 at 14:51, Bart Van Rompaey wrote:
> > On Mon, 2004-02-09 at 13:13, Christian Leutloff wrote:

[ .. snip ... ]

> > So I thought communication between plugins in those different languages
> > and the "core" could be done using Corba/Bonobo, since all those
> > languages have libraries for this. The core can be further developed in
> > glib c, and can keep using gdl, gnomebuild, ... . This way, you can
> > provide the largest possible freedom to the plugin writer too.
> 
> We dropped Corba/Bonobo for the simplicity of developing with GModules. 
> The old plugin system relied heavily on Corba/Bonobo which turned a lot
> of plugin writers off.  Interfaces may later be wrapped in Corba/Bonobo
> bindings but for now a nice C interface with Python bindings seems like
> the path of least resistance.  Even the Glade-3 developers have frowned
> on using Bonobo and instead wanted a modularized C API.  

I do not pretend to have *the knowlegde*, so I may be wrong with I'm
saying here. But GModule is only usable for C and C++ (using export C)
plugins. I think GModule and GInterfaces are indeed easier for the
plugin writer if the plugin writer is a C/C++ developer.

I still do not see how a python plugin would be loaded by scaffold... It
may be possible, but I don't know one. Please enlighten me. The only way
I see, is a C plugin invoking a python program. Suboptimal, to say the
least.

Corba/Bonobo is *not* hard. Their is just a sheer lack of documentation.
The biggest problem of GNOME. I could start a preach here, but I won't.
That in combination, with a sheer lack of expertise among the gnome
community, makes bonobo hard. Let's change that :-)

But it is a fact that Corba/Bonobo from python is quite easy. Actually,
i think it's even beautiful. (think: automatic stub and skell generation
at runtime when loading the idl, sigh, do I sound biased?). I don't see
why it shouldn't be used.

I've used the gedit component in one of my thesis related prototypes,
using bonobo in python. If the thing was probably documented, I had
written that code in no time. (Take that almost litterly). 
As Bart once said: "if something is probalby documented, it does need to
scare anyone". :-)

Even in C things like BonoboListener and BonoboEventsource, a possible
system for communciation between components, cannot be called hard. But
as I said, GModule would fit beter here, I guess.

Only my 2 €-cents of course :-)

Mikoyan