Re: Plugin System

[Martin Sevior <msevior seviorpc ph unimelb edu au>]

On Tue, 2003-09-23 at 08:19, Bob Smith wrote:
> On Sat, 2003-09-20 at 14:40, Rodrigo Moya wrote:
> 
> <snip>
> 
> > > 
> > the data service is the best example so far. Since both gnumeric and abi
> > use libgda to get data...
> > 
> 
> Been thinking about this some more. Why does this need to be implemented
> as a plugin? The way each app uses the data source is different. So,
> that code is app specific so it cant be shared. It's an app specific
> plugin. The part that can be shared is libgda itself, and that's in a
> library. No need to make that a plugin. Where a data service would be
> useful is when you want to support nonlibgda data services. But then
> your really defeating the purpose of libgda. Libgda is a wrapper that
> abstracts the database implementation specific code from the nonspacific
> stuff. If you do this in GO, your just reimplementing lots of libgda
> again.
> 

In the case of AbiWord the plugins also serve the purpose of extending
the program to take advantage of the services available on the platform
of choice.

libgda is not available on Windows. By using a plugin we can provide
GNOME users extra functionality without having to port libgda to windows
and without a huge pile of #ifdefs inside abiword.

Cheers

Martin
 
> <snip>
>