Orb (Was: Re: Hrm. Now I know why this list is dead)

[Bo Thorsen <gobo imada sdu dk>]

On Tue, 25 May 1999, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 24 May 1999, Dan Kegel wrote:
> > How about "Enable AppleScript-like scripting of all KDE and Gnome apps"?

KDE (most of the apps anyway) has chosen Python as the scripting language
of choice.

> This is a matter of a) exporting CORBA interfaces from the apps and b)
> writing appropriate language bindings for ORBit (Mico already has Perl,
> C++ and maybe others)
> 
> I would tend to suggest writing C++ bindings for ORBit then dropping Mico,
> since ORBit is a lot faster anyway. This avoids lots of effort duplication
> as we add additional bindings. But I'm not going to do it, no time.

I don't think the choice of the orb is much about speed. I mean we are not
throwing video through the orb (yet?). I don't think there is any corba
method in kde that really transfers a significant amount of data and
almost every call is on localhost which means marshalling is not an issue.

I have seen Mico do perfectly well on my own desktop, and this was with
the old use-DII-to-implement-SII scheme. After they implemented static
invocation the right way, Steffen Hansen measured a 40 times decrease in
call time.

I really think the orb choice for desktops should be about stability,
features and low bug counts.

> 
> [snip]
> 
> The issue is whether KDE and Gnome apps will export the same interface for
> doing the same things.

I think this is one area where cooperation should be relatively simple.

> 
> [snip]
> 

--

Bo Thorsen
gobo@imada.sdu.dk
Lahnsgade 31, st.
DK-5000 Odense C
Tlf: +45 66 11 83 85