Re: Common server activation

[Havoc Pennington <rhp zirx pair com>]

Hi,

Let's not lose focus here. As I understand it, the .desktop vs. separate
XML files issue is not even the important one; these are read by our
separate implementations of object activation, but have no bearing on the 
interface used to activate objects. Only the interface matters; presumably
the implementations will be distinct.

Still, if we're going to discuss it let's hear more about why using the
.desktop file is a good thing. I didn't mention earlier that XML seems
like a major advantage of using a different file; the .ini style files
(which we use for config as well) are kind of gross to parse and XML
offers the possibility of handling the files with generic tools (such as
Perl's XML module). So that's one of the reasons we'd like to switch.

Remember that we're working on a third interface, not adopting either
desktop's current method. i.e. right now we use .ini-style .gnorba files,
but the new method Elliot is prototyping will be XML-based. So everyone is
going to have to rework their existing codebase.

It may be productive to wait for some working code, rather than discussing
all this in the abstract. (I know both desktops have a temporary solution
to the problem, but I think no one is quite happy with those.)

Havoc