1 /*-------------------------------------------------------------------------
2 * C-Pluff, a plug-in framework for C
3 * Copyright 2007 Johannes Lehtinen
5 * Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a
6 * copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"),
7 * to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation
8 * the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense,
9 * and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
10 * Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
12 * The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included
13 * in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
15 * THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS
16 * OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
17 * MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.
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22 *-----------------------------------------------------------------------*/
25 * @page architecture Plug-in architecture
27 * @section architectureOverview Overview
29 * The plug-in architecture supported by C-Pluff is presented in the
30 * following figure. There is a thin main program controlling the plug-in
31 * framework. The main program is responsible for initializing and setting
32 * up the plug-in environment. Most of the application logic is contained in
33 * plug-ins which are independent components and can be developed and
34 * distributed separately. Plug-ins integrate with each other by providing
35 * extension points and extensions. An extension point is a point into which
36 * other plug-ins can attach extensions. An extension can be just
37 * information, expressed in XML format, or the plug-in may also provide
38 * program logic as part of the plug-in runtime library. The framework
39 * provides services for accessing extensions and for managing plug-in
42 * @image html architecture.png "C-Pluff plug-in architecture"
44 * @section architectureExtensions Extensions
46 * The idea behind extension points and extensions is that the extensibility
47 * is not limited only to few fixed plug-in types supported by the
48 * core application. Although the core plug-ins typically define the extension
49 * points for the core application logic, it is possible for any plug-in
50 * to specify additional extension points.
52 * For example, let us assume that we are developing an extensible text
53 * editor. One extension point defined by core editor plug-in could be
54 * auto-completion extension point. A plug-in providing basic Java source code
55 * support could provide an extension for auto-completing Java code.
56 * Now, while this extension could do basic auto-completion of plain Java code,
57 * it is customary that Java source code also includes embedded documentation,
58 * such as JavaDoc comments and tags, or annotations, such as XDoclet tags, as
59 * part of doc comments. Instead of trying to support all known tags and their
60 * semantics, the plug-in providing basic Java support could define another
61 * extension point for additional plug-ins that know how to perform
62 * auto-completion of different kind of tags in doc comments.
63 * This way the extensibility of the application is not limited to the
64 * extension points defined by the core application but the plug-ins can
65 * incrementally increase the extensibility of the application.