Re: Generic Embeddable plugins, Take 2

On Fri, 2005-01-14 at 21:09 +0100, J.M. Maurer wrote:

Thanks for the clarification, sounds much better too me.

> 1) The way martin plans to implement the Math plugin is *not* embedding
> components. Martin's proposed API combined with a C api for the rest of
> AbiWord presents a nice framework for future abiword plugins to use. It
> would allow them to tightly integrate with AbiWord (such as the math
> plugin) using a stable API (unlike we have now).

For plugins in general, I'd like us to use XPLC
<http://xplc.sourceforge.net/>. That would allow us to have a stable API
for these plugins, and that would provide language independance.

For those who wonder, XPLC is really lightweight, it builds on UNIX,
MacOS X and Windows. On my Debian, XPLC .so is less than 20KB so it
won't bring a lot of bloat in size.

> 2) The embedding issue is a totally different problem. Embeddable
> components would (generally speaking) not use anything from Abi such as
> the Graphics classes, at all. Furthermore they will be running most
> likely totally out of process. This means those embedded components will
> NOT be tightly integrated with AbiWord. This is a feature, not a bug. If
> you want really tight integrated plugins, use 1).

For this, we should have an internal framework to do that to bind to the
right component model for each platform, like OLE on Windows, Bonobo
and/or KPart of UNIX, etc.

Both 1 and 2 leads to the requirement of implementing embedded objects,
with a picture preview, thus requiring SVG support as explained
previously. See bugzilla 2463
<http://bugzilla.abisource.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2463>
and 5686
<http://bugzilla.abisource.com/show_bug.cgi?id=5686>

Hub

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