If Gavin's information is correct (and I assume it to be so) this is false.
IDL means that we get language-specific bindings for several languages
including Java and C++, simply by applyiing an automated tool. So there are
concrete technical advantages to using IDL, though we must apply those
tools for the programmers, so that I don't have to find an IDL tool to use
XML with my Java codebase.
> The commitment to JAVA for implementation
>is only a commitment to a slow language.
Again, verifiably false. There is no reason that native-code Java compilers
cannot exist. Languages aren't slow -- implementations are. Something you
learn sometime in your first 2 years of college...
> The commitment to it
>in the spec is a commitment to SUN. That should never be
>a part of the spec. It should be something the spec can
>be bound to. It will anyway, but XML's future is in many
>languages and platforms.
An argument for IDL, against Java (and one that I made, by the way, so that
we appear to be in raging agreement).
>Groves, as Richard Light pointed out, at the very least
>gives us authoritative names for things.
Which is good _if_ the names are meaningful to the audience, and is bad if
they make things harder for people. I agree that _gratuitous
incompatibility_ with grove terminology would be bad, but I think we should
evaluate it on its inherent merits, and give it an epsilon of advantage
(for being a standard) over any equivalent non-standard terminology. On the
other hand if it seems to create confusion we should deep-six it without
hesitation.
> As Joe English
>and Gavin Nicol have pointed out, the bindings here are
>trivial.
Great, then in the worst case, we need (at most) a "grove dictionary" if
groves turn out to be confusing. Naturally, if they are not confusing we
should use them.
> If that is the case, then groves-IDL-Whatever(Java, C++, etc)
>is the right thing to do.
Well, something certainly is the right thing to do (we hope). Care to be
more precise?
I now incline to IDL, with compiled-into-Java and compiled-into-C++
versions for IDL ignorati like myself...
-- David
_________________________________________
David Durand dgd@cs.bu.edu \ david@dynamicDiagrams.com
Boston University Computer Science \ Sr. Analyst
http://www.cs.bu.edu/students/grads/dgd/ \ Dynamic Diagrams
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