Plugin_API

[Home] - [Developer_Guide] - hosted at openANTz.com

also see: [OSC_API] - [OSC_Schema] - updated 2013-01-30

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Plugin API

The core application is based on components that can be extended through plugins.

Plugins can be statically linked and compiled into the executable or loaded at runtime as dynamically linked libraries.

OS specific file types are as follows:

static libraries - '.lib' (msw) or '.a' (posix systems, osx, Linux...)
dynamic libraries - '.dll' (msw) or '.dylib' (osx) or '.so' (linux)

A common descriptor is used that allows registering a set of functions with defined parameter types. The types are designed to support low-level data types that are well suited for numbers, text, audio, video and 3D. Think in terms of 32bit integers, floats and vertex arrays.

Plugins can be loaded at runtime at which time the descriptor is used to expose the functionality to the UI and other API's such as C, Java, Python and the [OSC_Schema].