From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>
Date: 2002-08-07T05:26:13+09:00
Subject: Re: COM on Unix?

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Christopher Browne" <cbbrowne@acm.org>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ruby
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 06, 2002 3:02 PM
Subject: Re: COM on Unix?


(snip large informative section with 5 URLs)

> Of course, it's pointless to _have_ COM on Unix systems if there are
> no applications that may be meaningfully automated using COM, and
> you'll find that that is in fact the case.
> 
> COM is only useful for "automation" if applications deploy COM
> interfaces, and on Unix, nobody deploys COM interfaces for this
> purpose.
> 
> The most analagous thing would be CORBA, and there are only a limited
> population of applications associated with the GNOME "desktop
> environment" that offer CORBA interfaces for pretty _limited_
> automation of some capabilities.

Thanks for this post. It's a good reality check.

However: Hypothetically speaking, isn't it 
imaginable that something like COM on UNIX
might be useful if it existed?

I've had a fleeting thought of making a little 
package that would allow embedding a Ruby interpreter
and running dRb or something... if it were easy enough,
people might use it to enable their apps.

And any app for which we had source could have it
grafted on. Daemons especially might benefit from 
such an interface, I'm thinking. Agree/disagree?

I'm not up to the task, though, so I'm just dreaming.

Hal