Components on the desktop

Author

Weis, T. ; Geihs, K.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Comput. Sci., Frankfurt Univ., Germany

fYear

2000

fDate

2000

Firstpage

250

Lastpage

261

Abstract

We report on our experiences with developing KOM, a component model for the K Desktop Environment (KDE), the most popular graphical desktop environment for Linux and other Unix systems. The paper focuses on two major subjects: (1) the design of the KOM component model and (2) the suitability of CORBA for such an environment. We describe the requirements and the new design patterns introduced by KOM, especially the signals&slots and actions pattern, and the trade-off between a clear design and aspects like memory usage, speed and practicability. KOM supports the distribution of components over the network and language independence. To achieve this, the first version of KOM was based on CORBA, while for the latest version CORBA was replaced by a new communication protocol especially designed for KDE. We show the problems and implications of using CORBA as a basis for a component model in a desktop oriented project like KDE

Keywords

distributed object management; graphical user interfaces; object-oriented programming; personal computing; protocols; CORBA; K Desktop Environment; KDE; KOM component model; Linux; Unix systems; actions pattern; communication protocol; component model; design patterns; desktop oriented project; graphical desktop environment; language independence; memory usage; signals&slots; Bismuth;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Technology of Object-Oriented Languages, 2000. TOOLS 33. Proceedings. 33rd International Conference on

Conference_Location

Mont-Saint-Michel

Print_ISBN

0-7695-0731-X

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/TOOLS.2000.848766

Filename

848766