Mer/Documentation/Vala control panel

Mer needs new control panels. But not everyone knows C, but they may be proficient in C#. Vala is a language with C#-like syntax, that compiles to C, which makes it perfect for writing CPAs which are (to my knowledge) C only. But, documentation on Vala is rather lacking.

An example can be found here: <source lang="csharp"> /*

*      cpa.vala
*      
*      Copyright 2009 Faheem Pervez <qwerty12>
*      
*      This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
*      modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
*      License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
*      version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
*      
*      This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
*      but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
*      MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
*      Lesser General Public License for more details.
*      
*      You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public
*      License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software
*      Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston,
*      MA 02110-1301, USA.
*/

using Osso; using Hildon; using Gtk;

public Hildon.Program program; public Gtk.Widget dialog;

Status execute(Context *osso, void* data, bool user_activated) {

       osso = new Osso.Context("vala-test-applet", "0.1", false, null);
       program = Hildon.Program.get_instance();
       data = new Hildon.Window();
       program.add_window((Hildon.Window)data);

       dialog = new Hildon.Note.information ((Hildon.Window)data, "Hey, I'ma CPA written in Vala.\n"+"The \"programmer\" who wrote me sucks; but he hopes \nthat this can be used for something.");
       ((Gtk.Window)dialog).set_modal(true);
       ((Gtk.Window)dialog).set_position(WindowPosition.CENTER_ALWAYS);
       ((Gtk.Dialog)dialog).run();
       dialog.destroy();

delete osso;

       return Status.OK;

}

//valac -C --pkg libosso --pkg hildon-1 cpa.vala ; gcc `pkg-config --cflags libosso hildon-1` -fPIC -c cpa.c ; gcc -module -avoid-version -shared -Wl,-soname,cpa.so -o cpa.so cpa.o -lc </source>

Save the above as "cpa.vala". Because valac seems to be more accustomed for making programs, you have to use valac's -C option which'll output the generated C code and gcc can then be used to make it into a library.

Improvements very much welcomed.