Re: Hrm. Now I know why this list is dead

[Dan Kegel <dank alumni caltech edu>]

Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> > It was possible to learn consequently that gnome people are quite unaware
> > of the collaboration efforts which are just popping up between the two
> > camps.
> 
> We do keep track of all of those things.
> 
> I do not know what gave you that idea, as few GNOME hackers have
> posted to this thread (I can only remember Maciej posting).  It has
> been basically a thread run by KDE advocates.

I'm desktop-agnostic; my only reason for being here is technical
interest in the interoperability issues.

>From my distant vantage point, it looks like the two have (or
will soon have) interoperable desktop entries, drag&drop,
and window manager hinting.  

Less likely to ever interoperate are the CORBA interfaces to individual
apps.

On the KDE side, KOM says that each app should be able
to respond to a set of standard events
( see http://developer.kde.org/openparts/html/openparts-2.html )
e.g. Desktop/Font/ChangeFont or OpenURL.
This is like Apple's AppleEvent system.
I have not yet seen a full list of standard events, so I don't
know how well (or whether) this is implemented yet.
The KDE web site is thin on Corba-on-KDE documentation;
http://developer.kde.org/openparts/html/openparts.html has a nice
general overview, but I don't see any tutorials.

On the Gnome side, Miguel wrote me some time ago that each Gnome app 
is on its own with respect to what methods it implemented.  
Also, there isn't any obvious reason to use Corba when writing
a Gnome app, judging by the guidelines in
http://www.gnome.org/devel/writing.shtml, which just says "Corba
will be used in the future".  A Gnome whitepaper,
http://www.edenproject.org/~martin/web/gnome-docu/white-papers/Components/Components/
talks about Corba quite a bit, but only in generalities.
There exists a Corba-on-Gnome tutorial, but it has not yet
been linked to from www.gnome.org.

It really seems to me that a few standard methods, like OpenFile and
CloseFile,
ought to be implemented by all KDE and Gnome apps that deal with files.
Perhaps the Gnome Workshop project (http://www.gnome.org/gw.html) 
will move in this direction.

It looks like Corba use by both desktops is at a very early stage,
so there ought to be some opportunity to design in some
interoperability.

Miguel, what do you think?  Don't all apps need an OpenFile method?
Why not standardize it, and make it interoperable between KDE and Gnome?

(OK, I understand that KDE and Gnome use different ORBs.  Let's 
finesse that point for the moment, and assume that the ORBs are
magically made interoperable.  What's important is that we design
in a path for compatibility.)
- Dan