Re: Generic Embeddable plugins.

>
> Le jeudi 13 janvier 2005 à 10:17 -0800, Dom Lachowicz a écrit :
>> --- Jean Brfort <jean.brefort@normalesup.org> wrote:
>>
>> > After some more thoughts, my opinion is that
>> > netscape plugin api is not
>> > what we need. It is devised for display files, not
>> > edit them, so you
>> > cannot save modifications in a plugin contents. The
>> > only possible
>> > interaction from a plugin to netscape is javascript
>> > calls.
>> > There are some enums in the headers that make think
>> > other possibilities
>> > were envisioned at some moment, but they are not
>> > documented and
>> > apparently not implemented either (I made tests to
>> > negotiate objects
>> > size from inside the plugin when working on
>> > mozilla-bonobo and the calls
>> > never returned).
>> > Gnome has a mostly working component system: bonobo.
>> > Printing is missing
>> > at the moment, but I feel it would not be very
>> > difficult to write an
>> > appropriate interface.
>>
>> If by "mostly working" you mean "all of the Gnome
>> developers are avoiding it like the plague", then yes,
>> it is "mostly working." Bonobo doesn't begin to
>> address any cross-platform considerations we might
>> have. I, for one, would not want to make a CORBA ORB
>> part of AbiWord's requirements. Nevermind the fact
>> that Bonobo is built around GTK+, which we only use on
>> our Unix platform...
>>
>> That's not to say that things like COM, Uno, XPCOM,
>> and Netscape don't all have their own set of
>> deficiencies. They all have major advantages and
>> drawbacks.
>>
>> I'm not advocating any particular solution at this
>> point in time. I'm only advocating that those who
>> would design and implement such a feature look before
>> they leap.
>>
>> Contrary to Jean's assertion, Netscape plugins can
>> send streams of data back to the browser. What is
>> lacking is a standard way for the browser to *request*
>> that it be given a stream of data from the plugin.
>>
>> The Netscape plugin API will also work nicely with our
>> existing GR_Graphics classes when printing. Some small
>> modifications will be necessary, but nothing major.
>> For contrast, Bonobo's printing interface was declared
>> dead and unmaintained several years ago.
>>
>> For reference:
>>
>> http://web.archive.org/web/20040203041440/http://devedge.netscape.com/library/manuals/2002/plugin/1.0/
>> http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xpcom/
>> http://udk.openoffice.org/
>>
>> What we have to find is the right combination of:
>>
>> *) Ease of design/implementing said plugin
>> architecture
>> *) Ease of creating new plugins
>> *) Market for vendor buy-in, 3rd-party plugins
>> *) Usefulness to our users
>>
>> If we can't implement it, it's useless. If our users
>> won't want to use it, it's useless. If people won't
>> want to write plugins for it or if people can't find
>> plugins for it, it's useless.
>>
>> Best,
>> Dom
>
> OK, I'm probably wrong. I stop now. If I can do something for abi, tell
> me. It should be simple because I am not very familiar with the code at
> the moment.
>

Hi Jean and Dom,
                 I've started to read through the Netscape plugin API. At
this point I see no reason why we can't write a
netscape-plugin, plugin.

That is, write some bridging code that translates our API to the netscape
API.

With that in place we can write a plugin that hunts down all the netscape
plugins on a users computer and registers them for use by AbiWord. This
would be pretty cool as suddenly all the browser based plugins would be
usable by us.

We would have real trouble with multi-media based plugins though. We would
have to work out a way to run threads. I think we should cross this bridge
later though.

If Jean wants to write a plugin that embeds bonobo components then please
do so! We can easily implement a PNG based snapshot of the component
almost immediately that would enable the document generated on *ix to be
used on all other platforms.

A windows dev might want to develop an ActiveX plugin. Once again, with a
PNG snapshot all other platforms could view that too.

Cheers

Martin

> Best regards,
>
> Jean
>
>
Received on Fri Jan 14 00:39:05 2005