Dolphin's ability to wrap using COM type libraries is almost eerie, but you are correct that there is still more to know (very obvious with the Office Automation interfaces). The callout methods themselves are made possible by the work that went into creating the type library. For a bare dll/so, one would need to parse and "understand" header files to get as far as Dolphin's type library analyzer gets. Has someone familiar with VW's DLL & C-connect commented in this thread? Two questions: is it something worthy of our respect? If so, how far away are we? If we matched, how much more would there be to do? I ask the latter question relative to what is reasonable to expect, at least for foreseeable future. Bill ________________________________________ From: pharo-project-bounces@lists.gforge.inria.fr [pharo-project-bounces@lists.gforge.inria.fr] On Behalf Of Germán Arduino [garduino@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2011 7:24 PM To: Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr Subject: Re: [Pharo-project] Popularity of Smalltalk in Software Industry
Haha.. i have strong suspicion that here you are talking about quite specific set of libraries, which using OLE/COM interfaces. Indeed, one could implement an automatic "import/connect" tool for it, because a library itself contain enough information reflecting it interface(s). You can check Dolphin smalltalk which works only on windows and has integrated solution for that for years: In same way like you described, you just pick the library, click "ok" and its done & ready for use.
True, I was just ready to write the same thing about Dolphin and works very well, transforming OLE objects in Smalltalk objects with their respective methods. But allways you need to know what to do with such objects and methods. And is very dependent of the operating system and the underlying technology. I think that the cooperation with the outside world is needed, but I will not miss the advantages of work in Smalltalk, lot of times is more cheap to develop the needed stuff in Smalltalk than a complex artifact to interact with another technology. Cheers. Germán.