CORBA events ? (was: Sound in Gtk)

[Jeff Steele <steele cheesesteak physics drexel edu>]

On Wed, 19 Aug 1998, yiyus wrote:

> And my idea: what about have sound support in Gtk? Something to make some
> noise when you press a button or slide an scroll bar, similar to sounds in
> E. I am not a good developer and know very few, but it doesn't look very
> difficult. The problem could be the speed in Gtk if it has to do sound, but
> I don't see any problem with E. And having sound in the Gtk themes would be
> really pretty.

This sounds like it could be generalized pretty well by using CORBA
events. For those who know even less than I, here's CORBA events in a
nutshell:

	- an object may be a PRODUCER or a CONSUMER of an event
	- the event transfer may be instigated by a producer (PUSH) or
by a consumer (PULL)

Anyway, if GNOME made use of CORBA events, than any number of apps
(objects) could potentially be event producers : any GTK widget, a
syslog watcher, mail delivery agent, alarm clock, calendar, disk usage
monitor, ....  Then one client would allow the user to browse all the
available events, subscibe to those that look interesting, and
configure their desired respone : bark when someone logs in, flash the
screen three times when it's time to go home, or just make a cute
little crinkle noise every time a button is pressed.

This approach has several advantages.  

* It's CORBA, so it's networked.
* It's CORBA, so it's (potentially) interoperable.
* Separation of code : clients (or GTK) don't need to know if you've
      got sound suport. 
* OOdles of configurability.  Some folks seem to like that.
* A good excuse for somebody to get CORBA events working.


Cheers,
	Jeff