Scripting idea

[Johan Hanson <j-hanson dsv su se>]

Hello.

I am an old Amiga user, and one of the great things of old AmigaOS was
that it had a scripting language built-in (ARexx).
Applications could have an ARexx "port" to allow it to recieve and
transmit ARexx messages between scripts and applications.

This functionality was used by many applications.
For instance, text editors could be glued to compilers, debuggers and
interface builders using scripts and ports.
It was (and still is) common for Web browsers (Amiga has a few) and
email programs (Amiga has a few of these too) to talk to eachother
using ARexx scripts.
Application programmers do not have to invent and implement a scripting
language. They can just add a port and connect some methods to the port,
and the program is scriptable.
In my opinion, this idea of letting independent applications work
together is in the Unix spirit of doing things.

The GNOME equivalent of the port mechanism, is CORBA, even though CORBA is
much more advanced.

I hereby suggest that the GNOME project should include:
 * standardized CORBA IDLs for securelly controlling applications from
   scripts and other applications, and:
 * script-interface bindings to CORBA from popular scripting languages
   like Perl and Tcl.

What do you think?
Is a mechanims like this already planned?


 / Johan
         --  johan@tiq.com  --  http://www.dsv.su.se/~j-hanson/ --