> > For Gimp 2.0, how much of it will be Bonoboized?
>
> We have not yet decided if we want to bonoboize something at all, but
> mostly due to the fact that noone I talked to so far could explain what
> this would mean in particular.
Bonobo support could come in many different shapes.
A 60,000 feet picture of Bonobization could include:
* Export GUI elements and GUI dialogs as controls that can be
used by third party applications.
* Export GIMP internals trough CORBA.
* Compound document editing.
Use the GIMP to edit in-place images in other
Bonobo-aware applications (Gnumeric, Sodipodi,
AbiWord, Evolution).
There are many other ways in which you can use Bonobo in the GIMP, but
this is a quick overview of the most visible features.
On controls:
The controls might be any special widgets or dialog boxes
that the GIMP has implemented that might be useful
in other applications (layers, color selector,
palette, brushes).
Exported controls could eventually be split out
(either because it makes sense, or because you want
to shrink the size of the GIMP). Once the controls
are exported through Bonobo, other applications can
use it.
Controls could then be used in applications like
Glade and embedded there.
On exporting internals trough CORBA
The idea behind this is that the GIMP engine,
would be exposed through CORBA and it could be
scripted remotely through any of the languages that
support CORBA.
Using the Bonobo support also means that in the
future (we are working on some of this) the GIMP
engine could also be exposed through SOAP.
Although the GIMP is already scriptable internally,
I believe there is no support for just using it
remotely. With Bonobo you can mix various
components and script them all at the same time.
For example, you could use the output from a
computation in Gnumeric to generate a graph in Guppi
and then mix it up with some background in the GIMP
and produce graphs from this ;-)
For more information:
Read my `Bonobo' white paper at:
http://www.ximian.com/tech/bonobo.php3
It is a bit outdated. You might also want to read on the
`Monikers' document at: http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/monikers.html
best wishes,
Miguel.
