Re: DIA 0.95

[Lars Clausen <lars raeder dk>]

On Thu, 2006-03-02 at 10:36 +0100, Cordoba MuÃoz, Oscar wrote:
> Dear sirs or madams,
>  
> I would like to thank you the effort in the program you develop,
> provided I have been taking benefit from it. I plug my own plug-ins in
> the same way as your UML library does do. My plug-ins are physical
> modelling libraries where the dragged and dropped objects are not only
> to make beautiful diagrams but to input data inside objects and
> build topologies. My plug-ins use a C++ architecture in such way
> that users could build its own libraries and dia would recognize
> automatically the objects structure, the connections,etc.
>
> I would like to make you three questions:
> -Do you have any idea about what is the dia future?. From v0.93 to
> v0.94 the C structures changed completely and I had to rebuild my
> libraries with a big effort. Now with v0.95 the API has changed again.
> The effort has been lower but had to recompile again all my libraries.
> Do you plan to change the plug-ins interface in every new version? It
> would be nicer to keep plug-ins through newer versions.

Until version 1.0, we will not guarantee that the API stays stable.  We
try to avoid changes when possible, but some of the things we implement
do require changes rather than just additions.  What we should do is
document carefully when we change it.

> -For Linux platforms I am using libtool, but not for windows and it
> works. The use of libtrool makes compilation slower, is it possible to
> do not use libtool in the rest of platforms?

You cannot compare the compilation speed between Windows and Linux, both
the OSes and the compilers are vastly different.  I don't think it is
practical to do without it on Unix systems

> -The policy I am following is do not modify any line in your code, to
> be compatible with new versions. In that case mayI send you a few
> requirements for you to be considered?. May I ask you question about
> the best way to do some tasks?. So far, I know I am using a low
> percentage of dia capabilities and perhaps the work is already done. 

You shall certainly be welcome.  We get little enough input from plugin
developers as it is.  You can do it either here on the list or in
bugzilla.

-Lars