[Kst] Re: Plugin Interface

[claude mercier]

He Georges,

I did not really looked before answering you on this, please find below 
my thought.

Even if not urgent, I think an end user, not like me, would understand 
better
the thing you offer below than the arrays of pointors ...

George Staikos wrote:

>int myPlug(double *array1, int insize1, double *array2, int insize2, double 
>scalar1, double **output1, int *size1, double **output2, int *size2, void 
>**local);
>
>The size arguments above make this format almost as much of a pain as the old 
>interface.  
>
it's an understandable pain to non good C programmer, we dont mind 
an-avoidable pain, it is just that if most
people are able to understand this, the arrays is more difficult to 
manage for the plugin programmer.

>Is there a better solution?  
>
may be ? did anyone looked ? I am planning on searching within 2 weeks, 
but it might be too late
I guess if we want to change this we have better to do it once , quickly 
and for good!

>Is this solution enough added value 
>to justify breaking all existing plugins?
>
The solution is good because, it matches the user defined interface 
(xml) to the plugin
interface and make things easier to manage for end user.
It has a drawback, one could think of a plugin which does nearly the 
same thing
with two different interfaces working for both (2 xml files and one C file)
do we need this ? (definitivly not for end user)

>   In addition, do you think it would be useful to have "constructors" and 
>"destructors" for plugins?  For instance, there could be two symbols in 
>each .so that are used for this, say "create()" and "destroy()".  This could 
>also be specified in the XML file if you want different names.
>
I missed the point here, dont understand the question.


Claude

>
>  
>

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Claude Mercier                     *  Email: Claude.Mercier at ias.fr  *
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