Subject: Re: Scripting
From: Randy Kramer (rhkramer@fast.net)
Date: Sat Jun 24 2000 - 19:35:50 CDT
Following up on my own post:
1. I meant to send this to the list.
2. I just realized that Scheme uses Lisp syntax. Oh no! I hope I (or
the church secretary) never have to touch it.
Randy Kramer
Randy Kramer wrote:
>
> I'm probably confused. I see the suggestion to use CORBA for the
> scripting language, but I think that maybe there are two different
> things to be discussed.
>
> Microsoft Word uses VB as a scripting language but also "exposes" Word
> objects and methods for use by other applications (which include Excel,
> Access, Visio, etc., but which can also include applications written in
> VB, VC, or similar). (I think the exposure of objects for other
> applications is COM, or DCOM, or OLE, or Automation, or something.)
>
> (I had trouble getting to the Corba website. When I finally got there,
> I learned that COM, DCOM, and OLE are not CORBA, but they appear to be
> similar technologies with similar goals, except that COM, DCOM, and OLE
> are Microsoft specific.)
>
> My question is whether this exposure of objects and methods for use by
> other applications gives control of the application from within AbiWord
> itself that I would expect from a built-in scripting language. Things
> like macros to <whatever -- reassign keys, insert boilerplate, search
> for a list of words and add them to the index??>. Will it? If it does,
> wonderful!
>
> On the other hand (the one without the glove), the idea of a scripting
> language (Guile) that can access any of the capabilities of Scheme
> (which I assume is a general purpose language), disguised as Python, TCL
> (and maybe a variation of WordBasic or Visual Basic) is beguiling (sorry
> -- I mean good).
>
> Hope this helps,
> Randy Kramer
>
> Mike Meyer wrote:
> >
> > Aaron Lehmann writes:
> > > > Aaron Lehmann writes:
> > > > > > I'd propose CORBA. The language is *not* imbedded in application. It's
> > > > > You know, I like this idea. I think it's a really productive disucssion
> > > > > when people come up with better solutions than the original posters. I
> > > > > knew about CORBA, but I didn't put two and two together to come up with
> > > > > the idea as a solution.
> > > > CORBA could make the Unix desktop an *incredible* environment, if
> > > > enough people used it.
> > > Forgive my scepticism, but GNOME is heavily dependant on CORBA and I don't
> > > see it as being very extensible via external programming
> > > languages...except possibly basic scripting in Gnumeric.
> >
> > That's because almost nobody is using it :-(. Last time I looked,
> > Gnumeric was the just about it, and it was pretty primitive.
> >
> > > > How'd you like to use AbiWord as the editor
> > > > portion of an IDE?
> > > Not very much. Although it would be rather simple with Gtk/XEmacs and
> > > AbiWord's GTK port.
> >
> > I'd be interested in more information about that - though that should
> > go offline.
> >
> > > > Given an IDE that can be configured to look for an
> > > > "editor" CORBA object, and AbiWord with such an object exported, it
> > > > could happen. (For those into the obscure, the SAS C compiler came
> > > > with an IDE that did this kind of thing, though I don't know if anyone
> > > > configured a word processor for the editor part).
> > > If CORBA does embedding, why does GNOME need the bonobo framework?
> >
> > CORBA doesn't do embedding; it's a distributed object tool. It can be
> > used for embedding, but there needs to be a standard on top of CORBA
> > that describes the APIs of embedable objects, and the UI used for
> > them.
> >
> > If you'd like, I could talk about some of the things I do with a
> > window manager that exports CORBA objects.
> >
> > <mike
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