Manila RPC Update 02/12/00

Sat, Feb 12, 2000; by Brent Simmons.

Overview

On February 12, 2000, the Manila RPC Interface was revised to support custody and saving window information.

The new checkIn handlers should be called whenever a client releases custody of a document.

The Manila RPC interface specified a binary refcon parameter for many set handlers. This parameter has been replaced by the windowInfo parameter, a struct that describes the state of a window.

In addition, many get handlers now no longer return a string, they return a struct which contains a string named body and a windowInfo struct.

Note: the specification is still evolving, is not yet frozen.

CheckIn handlers

manila.css.checkIn, manila.message.checkIn, manila.template.checkIn and similar are new in this revision.

They take three parameters: username, password, and siteName.

manila.message.checkIn takes four parameters: username, password, siteName, and msgNum. The msgNum identifies the message that is being checked in.

In this context, to check in means to release custody. A typical scenario may be that a client will release custody when a window containing a document is closed. Since it's no longer being edited, custody should be released.

windowInfo struct

Whenever you see a windowInfo parameter, or windowInfo as part of a returned value, then you're seeing this struct which describes the state of a window.

The windowInfo struct has six elements.

• height: the height in pixels of the window.
  

• width: the width in pixels of the window.
  

• top: the relative position of the top of the window, in pixels.
  

• left: the relative position of the left side of the window, in pixels.
  

• scrollLine: the line number of the first visible line at the top of the window.
  

• expansionState: a list of line numbers. Each number is the number of a line that is expanded.

windowInfo support in set handlers

manila.css.set, manila.message.set, manila.template.set and similar all now take as their final parameter a windowInfo struct.

The earlier version of the struct specified a binary refcon parameter: it's been replaced by the windowInfo struct. (Note: the binary refcon parameter was never implemented in Manila, but the windowInfo struct has been implemented.)

windowInfo support in get handlers

When getting a cascading style sheet, message, template, or other window-based item, a windowInfo struct is returned.

These handlers used to return a string only: now they return a struct like this:

• body: the actual text of the item, a string. This is what the handlers returned before this revision.
  

• windowInfo: a window info struct describing the state of the window.