Re: Understanding applets

[George <jirka 5z com>]

> Now I turn to applets 'little' programs that sit on the panel communicating by
> cobra? So the panel is a container and these are objects. Is there some reason
> why this is better than swallowing some apps, the mailcheck uses 3M of memory
> for gods sake. Will that last problem be solved by orbit?

well .. there are more things that are done with the applets then just
simple swallowing .. they are more integrated into the panel ... they also
have good session support without any work ... there can also be one
process managing several applets (something that simple swallowing
just can't do) .. so you don't need 3 separate processes if you put
3 different printer applets on the panel ...

there is also a swallow applet which encapsulates some applet functionality
around a swallowed application

the 3M problem is actually a 1M problem (you need to subtract the shared
memory) ... and yes this WILL be fixed with orbit ...

> Is the idea behind the applets that they are independent of the panel, could I
> write a floating button bar and include code to load applets on to it without
> recompiling the applets?

yes you can ... but it wouldn't make much sense unless you are doing
something very special ... the panel will support floating bars in the
future ... I haven't yet cleaned up the corba interface, but all you
areally have to do is to implement that corba interface and a few things
on the "host" app (such as applet menus, etc ...) ... but to get them to
work like they do in the panel, you'd have to duplicate a LOT of work
(like session saving, starting of applets ... which is not as simple as
it sounds, givent multiple applet processes)

George

-- 
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George Lebl <jirka@5z.com> http://www.5z.com/jirka/
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