docs/random/wtay/CORBA

CORBA and bonobo ramblings
==========================

This is about something I know nothing about, so I want
your views on the subject :)

statements in this doc might contain plain nonsense and 
utter ignorance about the subject, so feel free to correct
no matter how many brown paper bags I need to put over my
head.


CORBA
-----

The object request broker. It basically allows you to declare
objects using a language called IDL. It has the nice benefit
of allowing objects to live in other contexts, languages and 
even on other machines over the network.

Wrapping the GStreamer objects in CORBA objects doesn't look
like a problem. It will immediatly allow us to create objects
accros the network and use the framework in a distributed
environment.

You will end up with a lot of corba objects using this method.
Is this the way to do it? do we only need to CORBA-ify some
of the core objects instead?

I see a CORBA wrapper as something that exposes the API of
GStreamer. If I want to do distributed media processing I would
build up an app with corba calls. The point is that you use
the lowlevel CORBA API to create a distributed media app.


Bonobo
------

A component model build with CORBA. Bonobo has provisions for
creating embedable objects. As I understand it, this means that
it has something visible to embed. I know you can also use 
Bonobo without the GUI parts but why would we prefer Bonobo
over CORBA to handle that? 

Bonobo has a framework to create toolbars, menus and other 
neat stuff. It also has a serialisation mechanism that allows
you to, for example, merge a pipeline with a document in one
single stream. 

I see bonobo as a high level service provider, you create a
mediaplayer component that can be embeded into a document and
stuff like that.  The point here is that you use bonobo to 
create services out of user apps build with GStreamer.


Comments?

Wim