Re: Gnome FAQ:Cut & Paste

[Felix Bellaby <felix pooh u-net com>]

Miguel de Icaza writes:
 > > Will it be similar in spirit to Xdnd's method for tagging objects
 > > which are Dnd'd around the desktop, i.e., MIME typing, etc.? 
 > 
 > It is orders of magnitude more powerful.  
 > 
 > You do not transfer data, but you actually transfer an object
 > reference that implements a DataSource interface (IData in OLE2
 > terms). 

Sounds like a great idea.

> > What needs to be done?
>
> Lots.

The CORBA persistent object service direct access protocol (not to be
said with your mouth full) includes somthing useful you may not have 
noticed.

It passes objects around that are defined using a subset of IDL which 
only has attributes (no interfaces, modules, etc.) called DDL (Data
Definition Language).

The recipient of the object is supposed to either know which
attributes are there to be read/written or to look them up from the 
object's InterfaceDef member.

This allows you to pass any data without adding anything to ORBit (o:


Felix


PS: The rest of the persistent object service looks like a nightmare.