Re: [davinci-develop] Plugin SDK and GUI

[Paul H. <p.h...@ds...>]

On Wed, 2004-09-08 at 21:49, Elio Cuevas G=C3=B3mez wrote:
> So we need to create the GUI system and  a interface to access it form=20
> plugins (Plugin SDK). I'll leave the GUI for another moment.

I can deal with GUI programming if you want me to focus on that area, I
just need to know how we are going to structure everything, i.e how the
plugin interacts with the GUI, obviously we need to finalise most of the
features of the plugin, and how it will interact with the GUI...

>=20
> So we need to provide a way to call DaVinci functions from plugins. My=20
> first idea is to let plugins resolve DaVinci symbols and use them. I'm=20
> not sure it's possible or portable. My other idea is to make davinci=20
> "export" it's sysbols by putting them in predefinded adresses.
>=20

Hmm, I thought the idea of a plugin was to provide the functions for the
software, rather than the other idea, that is the point of .so/.dll
isn't it? A lot of the technical stuff is over my head (i.e. i'm
learning a lot of stuff!), but they say that ignorance can sometimes be
an advantage... I sounds to me like you are suggesting that we build a
lot of the functionality into the software, I understand some of the
reasons behind this but we need to outline what
information/procedures/functions come from the plugin itself, and what
comes from the software that is being plugged into.

So, from the 'front end' software we need this (and then some more
probably):

	-> Form Designer
	-> Designer "pallette" to hold components
	-> Syntax editor
	-> Calls to the appropriate compiler

And from the plug-in we need:
	-> Syntax for form designs... unless a generic one is used but this
needs to then be defined (i.e. Glade syntax or something)
	-> Pallette definitions, so we don't have components that can't be used
in some other language (like hidden fields in html and data access
components from LCL in pascal)
	-> Syntax highlighting/completion functions and procedures
	-> All necessary compiler information

This is a very 2-way road between the plugin and front-end, .so's and
.dll's are expected to be used in a one way system. Like a book, you
take information from it, you don't tend to write information to it. Is
there any more convenient way to have a 2-way system? It looks like its
going to be quite hard to implement a 2-way system (as it appears to
me).

> What do you think?
>=20

I think I am going to learn a lot :p better go and buy some kind of
"Advanced Pascal" book...

Paul