RE: About the declare-flow-object-class

Subject: RE: About the declare-flow-object-class
From: "Didier PH Martin" <martind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 5 Jul 1999 07:43:10 -0400
Hi Frank,

Frank said:
If the library can be written in any language, how do you specify that a
procedure or flow object is "exported"? You can't even specify the signature
of a procedure, and there is no notion of data layout for flow objects. To
do this, you would need to appeal to some interoperability standard like
CORBA or COM.

Didier says:
To your first question, I can reply that indeed we have to define a way to
interface. Actually we have different choices for an interface definition:
a) CORBA - Because CORBA do not have a single binary signature, we'll have
to be more specific by telling which implementation to use and include this
ORB with an OpenJade Package.
b) DCOM - This ORB has a common binary signature but is actually restricted
to window
c) XPCOM - cousin to DCOM but developed by Mozilla group. Share with DCOM
the same binary signature and is available on several platforms. Still work
in progress.

We have to be smarter than the WG who did the DOM at W3C. They specified the
DOM with a CORBA and a Java interface. This implies that actually the only
DOM really following the specs is Java. So, practically, we'll have to find
a common ORB for Mac and Unixes and DCOM for Windows. If we are lucky and
that XPCOM is more mature, we can kill several birds at the same time by
having a single binary signature for each platform. So, the first step is to
investigate different CORBA ORB and if they are: free, able to be embedded
in a free package, available on several platforms. If anyone has any
suggestion please feel free to do so. On the other hand, we'll have to
investigate the current state of XPCOM.

Like Ken said, we'll not be able to include this feature in DSSSL-2 specs
but could make it an OpenJade standard.

To answer to your second part, if we can find a common interface for
libraries, and that a scheme interpreter or compiler respect this interface,
You'll be able to define your own objects in scheme with all the
capabilities of the language. As soon as we have a solid interface defined
and at least a proto to show, we can share this with the scheme community
and, maybe, convince some authors to adapt their interpreter to the OpenJade
DSSSL engine.

regards
Didier PH Martin
mailto:martind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.netfolder.com


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