Jonathan de Boyne Pollard wrote in a message to Mike Bilow:

  > Enabling an application or library for SOM is basically just 
  > tedious work, involving writing the wrapper specifications in 
  > Object Interface Definition Language (OIDL) and then running 
  > them through the OIDL processor.  Metaware and IBM C compilers 
  > offer "Direct-to-SOM" which mostly automates this process, but 
  > competitive compilers do not.  Watcom does provide the OIDL 
  > processing tools, but you have to write the wrappers yourself.  
  > Writing OIDL wrapper specifications is roughly comparable to 
  > writing C header files.

 JdBP> You're showing your age there, Mike.  OIDL went the say of all 
 JdBP> flesh with the introduction of SOM 2.x.  It's IDL these days.

Really?  I never noticed.  You can't tell by looking at it.

 JdBP> I *certainly* wouldn't encourage people to *start* by writing 
 JdBP> OIDL. 

I hope my comments were not taken as suggesting that!

 JdBP> Incidentally, for those interested, I do include a full 
 JdBP> discussion of   SOM, the SOMObjects Developers' Toolkit, and 
 JdBP> DirectToSOM C++, in the   archive of the Pros and Cons list.  
 JdBP> It's one of the "value added" extras   included in the archive 
 JdBP> that I don't publish in the echo.

You really ought to stop worrying about dropping large documents into the
echo, especially valuable parts of the Pros and Cons List.  It is a heck of
a lot cheaper for most of the world to get this stuff through the echo than
by dialing up Europe.  If you can find a way to e-mail the whole thing to
me, I will be more than happy to make it available in the U.S.
 
-- Mike


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