Designing socket messaging format

[Manoj Plakal]

Manoj Plakal wrote:

>       Basically, we need a portable, light-weight messaging
>       protocol with a simple way of finding out how
>       to connect to an application and calling some
>       of the methods it exposes. Without having to
>       do HTTP and XML and all that stuff that comes
>       with XML-RPC and SOAP.
> 
>       I came across Scarab at http://casbah.org/Scarab/
>       This is interesting though the project's been abandoned.



          Forgot to add: the requirement could
          be re-stated as that of a portable, light-weight
          library for "instant-messaging" between applications
          running on the same machine.

          This might cover a lot of cases where you don't
          need RPC semantics (no return value expected)
          and you're sending simple data values (so no
          need of full-blown XML or other elaborate encoding).
          And you may not even need a reliable transport
          protocol (so no need of HTTP or even TCP).
          XML-RPC is cool but it seems like a really
          big and overweight hammer.

          E.g., sending a message to Word asking it
          to print a file, or asking Mozilla to open
          a web page, or an MP3 playlist manager
          accepting a request to play/pause/stop, etc.

          Manoj