[Kdenlive-devel] Breaking news

[Simon A. Eugster]

On 05.12.2013 14:16, Steinar H. Gunderson wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 05, 2013 at 01:07:59PM +0000, Anna Morris wrote:
>> I guess it's about aims and possibilities. It should be an aim to make
>> it easier for more people to contrible to the code and to add features
>> right? But is this possible? Can it be made possible?
>
> A plugin system does not make it easier to contribute to the code.
>
> Clear APIs and good internal modularity makes it easier to contribute to the
> code. What a plugin system does on top of that, is to make it (much) easier
> for people to integrate with Kdenlive _outside the scope of the project_.
> So if it's a goal for people to be able to maintain e.g. an Kdenlive effect
> in a separate project, independently of Kdenlive, a plugin system would help.
>
> A plugin system presupposes clear APIs and modularity; it does not work the
> other way around.

Nicely described. On top of that, to me it seems that plug-ins are 
overrated and re-usage is not as common as it could be, because you have 
to implement the whole plugin interface in the other application as well.

It works for effects (see frei0r/MLT), but not for the user interface, 
because code is often very specific there.

Possible exception is the titler …

Simon