Re: DBus IDL (Was Re: GLib plans for the next cycle)

["Brian J. Tarricone" <bjt23 cornell edu>]

Mark Doffman wrote:

> I understand that there is no difference on-the-wire between a
> function-call and message passing. The difference is in peoples
> perceptions and expectations.
>
> When I read CORBA IDL and see:
>
> int AFunction (int, int);
>
> Because of the connotations provided to me by years of procedural
> languages I expect this function call to be synchronous. I hope to break
> these perceptions by providing a message-based IDL.

I don't have this perception; I think you're mistaking your own 
perceptions for the majority's.

One of the huge benefits of this entire exercise is to "hide" dbus calls 
and make them look like methods on an object.  If you're going to avoid 
calling dbus methods "methods," then I fail to see the point.

Whether or not the object is local (in-process) or not is irrelevant. 
Whether or not the method call is sync or async is also irrelevant. 
It's a method call, pure and simple.  DBus itself even calls them method 
calls.  All you're doing by avoiding that in the IDL is making us learn 
and remember yet another confusing and incompatible syntax.

I ask you to *please* reconsider not using some normal method-call 
syntax for the IDL.  There's really no reason to do otherwise.  If there 
really is a perception problem, people need to fix that on their own.

	-brian