Servicetype inheritance (Re: kdenonbeta/kopete/libkopete)

[David Faure]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Tuesday 22 April 2003 23:57, Martijn Klingens wrote:
> On Tuesday 22 April 2003 23:22, David Faure wrote:
> > > The generic messaging framework that Neil and I want to set up for KDE
> > > and which is currently discussed on the kde-pim and kaddressbook lists
> > > will take the trader even further - it will ask for the user's preferred
> > > implementation of, say, the messaging/irc protocol to contact dfaure and
> > > then fire up ksirc, kopete, kvirc, bitchx or whatever app I've selected
> > > for IRC that implements this new messaging API.
> >
> > That's still about loadable modules,
> 
> Eh, no, it's more abstract. It's about mapping the messaging type
> ("messaging/irc") to the application associated with it (Kopete, ksirc, ...).
> This application is then launched (if not already running) with the proper
> arguments to contact the user that you selected from the address book.
> 
> All in all it has nothing to do with loadable modules.
Ok, it's the other case of KServices then: it's about applications.

> > I think this solution would be very hard to explain to those who haven't
> > followed this discussion. The concept is very internal ("to keep looking
> > for services that also implement the parent servicetypes of the one we're
> > looking for in the first place") - wow, how do you resume that in a single
> > word, self-explanatory out of context?
> 
> "allowParentMatch" ?

"what's a parent service"?

(this is about inheritance between servicetypes, not between services, but
that's not obvious)...

> > Waldo's IsAlso is a much simpler concept.
> 
> True - but it only covers mime types, making it far less generic and might
> even force us to add weird hacks to the messaging framework in the future to
> allow the same since the trader doesn't support it for non-mimetypes.

No, the concept wouldn't be limited to mimetypes, in fact.
X-KDE-IsAlso can surely apply to servicetypes as well, if you have a case
where it makes sense.

> But there's more than just black and white, there's more than mimetypes and
> components as I hopefully made clear this time :)
No, every service is either app or module (component),
and every servicetype is either a generic servicetype or a mimetype, 
those are the very basic concepts being used here.

But indeed you can map either one to either apps or modules,
so in your case you're mapping servicetypes to applications :)

> You might have, but by doing so you turned the messaging framework's
> implementation into a potential problem...

Why? If you need to say that messaging/irc is a special kind of messaging/all,
you'll just say X-KDE-IsAlso=messaging/all.

- -- 
David Faure -- faure at kde.org, dfaure at klaralvdalens-datakonsult.se
Qt/KDE/KOffice developer
Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB, Platform-independent software solutions
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQE+pcBE72KcVAmwbhARApqdAKCI4ODN3MspqrriJBNMYwmc6O8CBwCeIpqo
ui5LJok7mjJwmKrdzxmL0jM=
=Ayov
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----