Another incremental piece of work on the PWG.

Original commit message from CVS:
Another incremental piece of work on the PWG.

diff --git a/docs/fwg/gst-plugin-writers-guide.sgml b/docs/fwg/gst-plugin-writers-guide.sgml
index d557f4e59d535e4297d14269780a31afb30f3178..a6734bc22520b74664cf35b0349ca4e1a0275104 100644 (file)
--- a/docs/fwg/gst-plugin-writers-guide.sgml
+++ b/docs/fwg/gst-plugin-writers-guide.sgml
@@ -544,9 +544,73 @@
       <para>
         A new element is defined by creating an element factory.  This is a
        structure containing all the information needed to create an instance
-       of the element.
+       of the element.  Creating a factory requires two things: a type for
+       the element to be created
+       (this was defined in the boilerplate above: FIXME - reorganise),
+       and a GstElementDetails structure, which contains some
+       general information about the element to be created.
       </para>
 
+      <sect1 id="sect-defineelt-eltdetails">
+        <title>GstElementDetails</title>
+       <para>
+         The GstElementDetails structure gives a heirarchical type for
+         the element, a human-readable description of the element, as
+         well as author and version data.  The entries are:
+       </para>
+       <itemizedlist>
+         <listitem><para>
+             A long, english, name for the element.
+         </para></listitem><listitem><para>
+             The type of the element, as a heirarchy.  The heirarchy is defined
+             by specifying the top level category, followed by a "/", followed
+             by the next level category, etc.  The type should be defined
+             according to the guidelines elsewhere in this document.
+             (FIXME: write the guidelines, and give a better reference to them)
+         </para></listitem><listitem><para>
+             A brief description of the purpose of the element.
+         </para></listitem><listitem><para>
+             The version number of the element.  For elements in the main
+             GStreamer source code, this will often simply be VERSION, which is
+             a macro defined to be the version number of the current GStreamer
+             version.  The only requirement, however, is that the version
+             number should increase monotonically.
+           </para><para>
+             Version numbers should be stored in major.minor.patch form: ie, 3
+             (decimal) numbers, separated by ".".
+         </para></listitem><listitem><para>
+             The name of the author of the element, optionally followed by
+             a contact email address in angle brackets.
+         </para></listitem><listitem><para>
+             The copyright details for the element.
+         </para></listitem>
+       </itemizedlist>
+       <para>
+         For example:
+       </para>
+       <programlisting>
+  static GstElementDetails example_details = {
+      "An example plugin",
+      "Example/FirstExample",
+      "Shows the basic structure of a plugin",
+      VERSION,
+      "your name &lt;your.name@your.isp&gt;",
+      "(C) 2001",
+  };
+        </programlisting>
+      </sect1>
+
+      <sect1 id="sect-defineelt-constructors">
+        <title>Constructor functions</title>
+       <para>
+         Each element has two functions which are used for construction of
+         an element.  These are the _class_init() function, which is used to
+         initialise the class (specifying what signals and arguments the class
+         has and setting up global state), and the _init() function, which
+         is used to initialise a specific instance of the class.
+       </para>
+      </sect1>
+
       <sect1 id="sect-defineelt-pads">
         <title>Specifying the pads</title>
         <para>
@@ -564,6 +628,22 @@
         <para>
         </para>
       </sect1>
+       
+      <sect1 id="sect-defineelt-arguments">
+        <title>Adding arguments</title>
+        <para>
+         Define arguments in enum.
+         
+        </para>
+      </sect1>
+
+      <sect1 id="sect-defineelt-signals">
+        <title>Signals</title>
+        <para>
+         Define signals in enum.
+
+        </para>
+      </sect1>
     </chapter>
 
     <chapter id="cha-definetype">