Re: Brainstorm: Desktop

[Phil Dawes <philipd parallax co uk>]

Derek Simkowiak wrote:
> 
> > Hmm, couldn't CORBA be used for this too? So, you'd have a .gnomerc with
> > the name of your 'configuration object' in it, and you'd connect to
> > the corba server, retrieve the configuration object, and go from there.
> > Now that would be portable, plus all of the advantages from above.
> >
> > -NOTE- I haven't studied CORBA too well yet, so I don't know if this is
> >        feasable
> 
>         Yes, I'm curious about how CORBA would work with this too.  CORBA
> experts?
> 
> Derek
> 

It could be done. You'd need some base pointer to the object in some
configuration file, (maybe the IOR (interoperable object reference) if
the object wasn't going to move, or a nameservice identifier), but once
you'd got that it'd be easy to connect to the object and request the
configuration info from it.

The question is, what does this approach really give us over just having
a configuration file in a standard place. Actually, there's no reason
why we shouldn't just do both - have a configuration file which the
config object reads from. That way you can alter the values by hand if
required (I hate being *forced* to go through gui tools, although I do
like to use them), and you have the advantage of being able to try out
somebody else's config by simply pointing you desktop at their config
object.

Just thinking aloud,

Phil.

-- 
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 Phil Dawes                               |   My opinions are my own
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