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In article <web.3ec106212a3b3a27f73ed81b0@news.povray.org>,
"Kitsune_e" <kit### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> I have read no articles on building plug-ins, I do not know specific
> methods. It occures to me that C has generaly the same data structures
> accrossed multiple platforms (string int double etc). C is ment to be
> portable, the compiler should handle any non-system specific code on any
> system. I do not know if that is the case in practice though.
C source code is portable unless it uses something specific to a
platform. Binary data structures and compiled code are not portable. And
there is no standard way to dynamically load compiled code in the form
of plugins, this requires platform-specific code. This is why patches
are used instead of some plugin system...the plugin system would have to
be rewritten for each platform. The plugins themselves would be a
nightmare for support, with people trying to use plugins compiled for
the wrong systems and potential for conflicts between plugins.
One possible compromise would be to use a platform-independant bytecode
format, similar to Java class files. However, this has a speed penalty
because the bytecode has to be interpreted instead of directly running
machine code, and it would be easier to just load the files from the
source code as is now done with include files. So, one form of plugin is
impossible, the other is slower than the alternatives.
--
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
http://tag.povray.org/
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