le 2001/11/05 0:19, Mark Lincoln à mlincoln@... a écrit :

> Okay, folks, I don't have a lot of programming experience, especially
> outside of FB.  So I need to ask:  How do other programming languages allow
> us to implement plugins?  I always figured plugins were something created as
> needed by programmers as opposed to being part of the programming
> environment.

as unofficial spokesgnome for plugins.

you are right in so far as it is for each programmer to make her plugins.

when you want others to also make them you then publish an api and specs
saying how these things work.

however, the making of them depends on your programming environment.

examples of the more popular plugins [photoshop,excel,filemaker] are often
added to the ide as sample code to show how to do it. but that is not the
issue here.

a plugin is generally code that will execute in another apps memory space,
it is wrapped in either at startup ['classic' plugins], or called as needed
[plugins as shared librairies]. so, unlike a fullblown application, there is
a lot of things 'missing'. the missing part is important. if it is there,
your plugin becomes an application rather than a plugin, with it's own
memory space and all. however, the plugin does need a mechanism to set up
the little environment that it does use. currently it is this that is
missing in fb^3. similarly for shared libs which are slightly different
beasts.

it is ironic to a certain extent as it is more difficult to provide all the
wrappings for a real fullblown app than for a plugin [or code module]. but
it can be work and it is a question of priorities. andy, rightly, decided
that it was more important to allow users to make apps rather than plugins.
there are a lot of people on this list who would be severly lost, and
probably angry, had fb^3 arrived with only plugin support.

there are probably inacurracies in this post, i count on my betters to
correct them.

hth
:-j