Dave is making a point on Scripting News regarding IDL (or in this case WSDL) for Frontier, and other non-typed scripting languages. His point is that he cannot generate at runtime the WSDL directly from the code, as can C# or Java developers - b/c their runtimes have information about the types and numbers of parameters to a call.

This means having to handcode the WSDL for a web service in these environments, which can be a PITA if your service is at all large.

I have an idea though. One way to get around this would be to implement a meta-data header for these environments similar to javadoc. I'll use Frontier as an example.

In Frontier, scripts are outlines. Frontier already has a rich set of functionality dealing with rendering outlines into other formats, esp. HTML. You can use[#directives](http://monkinetic.blog/tag/directives) in your outlines, which get translated into information in the symbol table when rendering the outline (or any other datatype for that matter).

So, I would propose a simple set of[#directives](http://monkinetic.blog/tag/directives) that can be inserted into a script outline above the actual script code, as a commented block. That block can be grabbed and processed to generate whatever idl format is desired.

This is just an idea, someone with more Frontier experience could come up with a better design. I also know that Perl has Perldoc and POD (inline support for manpages), so including this information in perl scripts in a long tradition in that community.

Also, at least someone is working on WSDL support in Python (which has an easily introspected runtime). "Therefore I am planning to write a WSDL generator that will examine our exposed methods and write out a valid WSDL file."

So, I think that lack of explicitly typed data should not be the final reason not to support some sort of IDL for web services. There may be other, better reasons, but I have not seen them yet.

On another topic, Dori says "The answer seems to be in Apple support document #14449, [...] No direct link from here, unfortunately, because [...] WebObjects sucks."

Tom Negrino at Backup Brain, to whom I think I have never linked, has some great tidbits about the iPod from Macworld: "We're nowhere near maxing out the power of the iPod's hardware."

Dave writes: "AaronLand is updating. Bravo! I added him to the rotation for my WeblogsComHelper app so his updates will show up on the weblogs.com home page."

Nick Denton links to a Spanish new site with some awesome information graphics on the goings-on in Afghanistan. Flash. Excellent information design.

David spots a great bumper sticker:

"Avoid meddling in affairs of dragons
for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup." Some of my readers may not know this is a clever send-up of a famous quote from J. R. R. Tolkien's classic "Fellowship Of The Ring": "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger."

Dave says: "Work without coffee? My brain says no."

Matt Goyer says he could not work for U-Haul without going psycho...

Ev has an R.E.M. moment. Exhuming McCarthy

Another set to add to my reading list: Count of Monte Cristo (original by Dumas), and the 5 SF tomes David mentions here.

"Jim" Roepcke, my current WebObjects mentor and all-around great guy, is bragging about the blog he built in an hour with WebObjects. We won't mention who put him up to it...

At Macworld SF, Steve Jobs layed out Apple's vision for itself and the future of the Macintosh. In a 15 minute section of his keynote, he described the digital lifestyle, where our Macs become "Digital Hubs" that route information and media between the new generation of digital devices that are becoming more and more commonplace.

#item1413"='href"http://jim.roepcke.com/2000/12/03None#item1413"' 12="" 2000="" href"http:="" jim.roepcke.com="">Jim points out that Radio Userland, once promised to be a free distribution, will actually have a moderate price once officially released.

"Jim" announces OutlineXplorer, an in-development outliner for Mac OS X.

As seen on Brian Carnell's home page, I've added Labels to my weblog entries. You can click the label to see all messages with that label, making it easy to see all my weblog postings about XML, Mac OS X, or Software Engineering, for example.

Jim Roepcke's got his copy of Mac OS X, too, and posted his first message from the Uber-OS.