Re: Patch: Pluggable module loaders and demo loader

Am Donnerstag, den 03.02.2005, 22:13 +1100 schrieb
msevior@physics.unimelb.edu.au:
[...]
> No indeed :-)
>
> This is exactly my chain of thought. We also need the build system to create
> a prefix/plugins/subdirectory
>
> We place plugins that are loaded on demand in *prefix/plugins/subdirectory*
>
> The hooks look in this subdirectory for the explicit and expensive plugins
> they need.

Ok, i now have some more concrete plans.
Maybe all it needs for a hook is an xml file that describes menus-items
(and maybe toolbars later on). A pluggable loader would parse the file
and modify abi's GUI accordingly. the loader also works as proxy for the
menu hooks so it can load the actual plugin lib when it's first needed.
(This has been discussed on the list a few months ago, i know). I think
i will try to write such a loader. That's another place where the
pluggable loaders stuff could prove useful.

The directory structure could be:
AbiWord-2.4/plugins/libAbiMath.xml
AbiWord-2.4/plugins/libAbiMath/libAbiMath.so

For now i'm posting an updated version of the previous patch. As
described previously in this thread i have now split
XAP_DefaultModuleFactory out of XAP_ModuleManager (manager-functionality
vs managed functionality).

If there are no objections i will probably commit this towards the end
of next week as i have to catch up with life a little and do some work
for not borking this term completely at the uni.

In the meantime i'm also hacking to extend the plugin manager dlg so it
can show plugins as a 2-level tree with the respective factory as root
node (unix only).

Best,
- Rob