From: Graeme Gregory <ggregory@bitbox.co.uk>
  To  : ggi-develop@eskimo.com
  Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1999 09:35:38 +0000 (GMT)

Re: libggi3d

On Fri, 5 Feb 1999, Aaron Gaudio wrote:

> Also, are you looking to use IDL for most of this stuff? My opinion is
> that IDL would make a good interface layer at the high-end, but that
> API and low-level developers are not going to want to deal with the
> overhead (for instance, will CORBA be beneficial to someone implementing
> OpenGL on GGI3D?). Perhaps you know more about CORBA than I...is there
> a way of using the interfaces defined without going through any form
> of GIOP? Nonetheless, I'm still not sure it's suited for the primarily
> low-level stuff GGI3D will be dealing with. Personally I'd prefer
> vanilla C++ (although I was going with the assumption of C).
> 
IDL and CORBA are seperate concepts. IDL is purely used to define the
interface to something. Doesnt even have to be C++ Ive used IDL to C
compiler before. In its lowest form it just generates the .h files and
therefore the type checking for interfaces. If you have a fancy ORB etc
etc then IDL can be cleverer and generate the bizarre headers that go with
it. Also in the definition of CORBA is the concept of your "objects" being
local to you in the same address space. When this happens the calls are
not passed through the fancy ORB stuff.

IDL would probably be a good choice for any slightly complex interface as
it is pretty much self documentating. And is much cleaner than the *.h
files of C and C++ usually end up.

Graeme