Thread: New Linux Project (windows maybe)

Hijinks, anything you do in Python can be used I'd assume. With the way we're thinking about doing things, it should be pretty easy to do just about any language. Python, Perl, and even VB/VC(with Wine) for the Linux guys... I've been working on the framework, program stack, etc to try and get something that's somewhat useable to put up. ALOT of debugging information, and of course trying to keep it all portable..

I like the idea of having the ability to "embed" standalone apps. But instead of making everything a standalone app, how about having one plugin for launching, killing and resizing an external app? This should be a really simple plugin, and once made, people would need no programming skills to add features/programs.

I like the port idea, but it's maybe not the easiest to program? (and a bit overkill until people start building networks of computers into their cars... I would thinl simple function calling is more effective.)
How about each plugin "subscribe" to messages of different sorts? For example, the mp3 plugin will need keypress input, and output song name, time etc. The wardriving plugin will need gps information and keypress, output network names etc...
The core will then manage several defined message queues and call functions in the loaded plugins. I think this may be an effective and not too complicated solution.

Another idea is the xmms way of doing things, where you can send messages to xmms on the command line. For example, xmms -pause will pause the running xmms.


Just some thoughts...

Originally Posted by bigb

I was thinking if plugins were "standalone" apps, that the main program would launch, and kill on it's own would allow us to have greater portability. Say a windows user wants to use MapPoint for his GPS software, XCar could launch the executable, and find the pid of the process after launch, allowing it to kill/minimize/etc the application?

Downsides I could think of were the need for every application to be larger than it has to be. The upsides are alot greater expansion w/o problems.

Reason I was thinking about this, is I was trying to think when doing the plugin support what would be needed from main application. Would it need access to the audio channels, would it need direct video access, etc.. and I can't think of one reason why it would. If applications were independant, creating "plugins" would be a hell of alot easier for those that don't have alot of C++ knowledge, and are just learning.

Of course, even in this setup, we'd have to have some shared libraries, etc to allow a plugin to get information from the main program. (like current volume level, status, etc). Though that is very easy to do. (either have the main app listen on a specific port # for incoming connections, or a simple shared library to gather info like that).

Any ideas out there?