NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/alt/softsys/tooltalk/70

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-21 | 1.7 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!psinntp!bacon!jordan
From: [e-mail] (Jordan Hayes)
Newsgroups: alt.soft-sys.tooltalk
Subject: Re: Heuristics - TT Applicability
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 21 Jan 93 14:39:08 GMT
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Frank Greco <[e-mail]> writes:

    Does anyone have some heuristics as to when/where an
    application program would use ToolTalk v.s. RPC ...

I see ToolTalk as being a high-level "instruction" mechanism.  Do this,
do that, open this file, load this image, etc.  Small, simple
instructions.  I don't see it as a general purpose data transfer
mechanism.  It's more like a generalization of X Windows properties --
but doesn't constrain you to a single display.  Properties are nice for
signaling events and instructions between clients, but you wouldn't
want to copy 500k onto a property and tell another client to then read
the property, would you?

-----

As for your other question -- does anyone read this group -- I'd say
that lots of people read it, but not that many people a) care or b)
have a lot of experience with it.  Not that it's a bad thing, just that
the task it is best at -- desktop integration, IMHO -- is not something
a lot of people are working on.  Often with distributed systems, we see
the need to do both kinds of work -- "instruction" and "transfer" ...
and it's often easier to add "instruction" to your existing IPC
mechanism.

Now, for ISVs, on the other hand, supporting ToolTalk in terms of
interoperability ought to be a primary concern.  But for that all you
do is figure out how to integrate it and then leave it alone :-)

/jordan