Re: [Plastic-devs] Occasionally asked questions

[Mark T. <m.b...@br...>]

On Thu, 23 Nov 2006, Noel Winstanley wrote:

>> I find the "it's not Java-centric honest" rhetoric to be slightly
>> disingenuous: what is true is that the hub has to be written in Java
>> (um, unless you want to try to fake Java RMI-Lite communications from
>> Python ... good luck).  I'm not sure whether you're avoiding emphasis
>> of this fact in order to serve the greater good, or if it's an oversight.
>> 
>
> does / should the plastic spec mandate that java-rmi must be supported in a 
> valid implementation of a hub?
> an xml-rpc hub could certainly be written in python.
>
> there's other transports / encodings that you could consider adding to such a 
> hub - JSON being the currently most fashionable - http:// 
> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Json - because of it's utiility in ajax-like things.
>
> should a minimum set of transports be mandatatory for a hub? or, if not, is 
> there a way of describing what transports a hub supports (something in the 
> .plastic file maybe?)

I suppose this is not explicitly stated anywhere, but I always assumed
that a compliant hub was obliged to support all of (i.e. currently both) 
the defined transport protocols.  If it doesn't, then some applications
are going to find themselves locked out of PLASTIC conversations on 
some desktops.

-- 
Mark Taylor   Astronomical Programmer   Physics, Bristol University, UK
m.b...@br... +44-117-928-8776 http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/