Re: [Libreoffice] minutes of tech. steering call ...

At 4:11am -0400 Fri, 21 Oct 2011, Stephan Bergmann wrote:
> On 10/21/2011 02:06 AM, Kevin Hunter wrote:
> > 5. That API definition will be a *lot* of work, but hopefully somewhat
> > thought out already through only a mild reengineering of the current
> > binary API.
>
> The UNO API is already there. Or what do you mean?

I was talking about an API that is not dependent on an ABI.  But I 
freely admit I know very little about ABIs, so I may have just conflated 
that term.  See below.

> > The upside is that if we're talking a major version change, /now/ would
> > be the time to do this.
>
> A downside is that you would still need to maintain (and build!) the UNO
> runtime for the MSVC ABI.

This may be the crux of what I'm not getting, but why?  Why can't a 
protocol be, say, text-based via (local, or other) socket?  In my mind, 
I see two independent programs, from two different compilers, using the 
OS and something akin to pipes to communicate.  I admit it might a 
smidgen slower to do it that way, but do people actually use LO in HPC 
scenarios?  (And I fully accept that they might, I just haven't seen it 
yet in my various interactions.)

Kevin