[sldev] Plugin hooks

[Argent Stonecutter]

On Feb 27, 2007, at 8:31 AM, Tim Shephard wrote:
>> The thing that's REALLY stupid is that Linden Labs has an
>> encapsulation API already, as mentioned in the reply to my message
>> about how to encapsulate parameters to plugins, and nobody's talking
>> about how to use that.

> How would you use it to instantiate widgets and react to widget
> events, like the ones in Dales plugin for example?

That's a hairier problem because C++ APIs are so much more complex  
than C, and one that's best addressed by some kind of automation.  
There are packages that automatically generate glue code for calling  
native routines from scripting languages, and while these are usually  
for C rather than C++ I don't see that as an insurmountable barrier.

It's a pity the SL GUI is in such an awkward language, rather than a  
low level one with a well defined calling convention or a real high  
level language like Objective C, one that supports dynamic method  
calls at runtime and provides pretty much all the hooks you need  
without extra work.