[Gs-devel] RE: Installable plugins : homemade COM

[Igor V. Melichev]

Developers,

I received multiple responses about the "COM" issue.
Thanks a lot for all them - all responses were very useful.
But now I see that I insufficiently explained what I want to do.
here is explanation.



Introducing plugins, I only wanted to make a simple architecture which
allows to compose different GS-based packages for different customers.
Currently GS is an unorganized heap of features requested by
various customers, which frequently come into
contradictions (remember the recent problem with streams/stdin).
I believe that we should stop the practice of mixing all
features in a single huge distribution. Also I am unhappy with
the huge unorganized gs/src directory. I believe that plugins
could resolve these problems. Here is my understanding :

  
        plugins == easy composition of products 
  

That's all. No marshalling. No interprocess communications.
No "glop". Such things may be useful sometimes,
and can be done as plugins sometimes, but PLEASE : NOT NOW!!!

Particularly I suppose that in future plugins may contribute special
operators to PS interpreter. Also GS devices, PS filters, 
debugger, ICC color, and all others what anyone can dream about
may be done as plugins. But again, PLEASE : NOT NOW!!!

Igor.