[vos-d] Metaobject Doc

[Reed Hedges]

Ken Taylor wrote:
> 
> Next.... I had an idea that it would be useful to document MetaObjects in a
> way that the VOS API doesn't cover. Specifically, things visible by the
> "external" world accessing a VOS site -- not necessarily things internal to
> the VOS library 

OK, cool.  We have needed that kind of thing for a long time.  We had a
simple way of doing this called OTD (object type definition) a while
ago, but then all the code change and all the OTDs went out of date :)

One thing that I think Peter's going to include as a key part of S5 is
the ability to generate code from an IDL/OTD, so we can also generate
documentation from that.  We'll include your MetaObjectDocumentation
ideas, or maybe do both.

> I've only done one for now (Object3D), with an idea of how the format might
> look. Feel free to improve it, and add more! Brave is he/she who documents
> property:property ;)

Property's actually really simple:

Message methods (and replies/updates sent):
* read (-> update)
* write (-> update??)
* replace  (-> update, replace-update [for errors])
* get-datatype (-> datatype-update)
* get-length (-> length-update)
* start-listening (-> start-listening-reply, update)
* stop-listening

No child objects defined (but they might be used in certain applications).

Then there's the access control policies.

Reed