Inspiration from EPlugins

[Adam Hooper <adamh densi com>]

This morning I've scanned over some of the in-development EPlugin 
documentation (http://primates.ximian.com/~notzed/doc/e-plugin-manual/) 
for a few minutes.  (EPlugins are plugins for Evolution). What do 
EPlugins have that we don't?

- Information about a plugin is stored in a separate XML file. We've 
been looking for a way to get extension descriptions in Epiphany, this 
sounds like a good idea.
- "Hooks" are defined in an XML file somewhere. All functions are a 
result of hook callbacks. In Epiphany, we just use signals.
- "Hooks" are all invoked with a single data argument; in more complex 
functions, it would be a struct. In Epiphany, signals can be emitted 
with multiple arguments.
- Plugins can be written in multiple languages (e.g., mono).

Since I've got to go to work soon, I can't really elaborate (or even 
confirm that I've understood these docs). But my brief summary:

- Our extension system, with GObjects and signals, is Really Cool 
(signals are great). Especially in 1.5 when we'll load/unload them 
on-the-fly (I promise!)
- We should store data about extensions in an XML file. We could 
probably copy the Epiphany format to a large extent. Should this go in 
$(LIBS)/epiphany/extensions?

--
Adam Hooper
adamh densi com