[gmpi] Re: Topic 1: Audience for and users of plugins

  • From: "Silver Blade" <silverblade_uk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <gmpi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 17:58:00 -0000

The target audience can probably be broken down into the following primary
categories:
1) Host developers
2) Plugin developers
3) End users

These are all pretty self-explanatory. Interfaces such as audio outputs
would probably fall under the second category, since technically, if these
will be directly supported by the GMPI, the drivers would be acting as
plugins.

In all cases the primary objectives should be:
- Functionality
- Simplicity/ease of use

That is, as much functionality as possible should be implemented in a way
that is easy to work with.

End users should be able to load and unload plugins from the same place,
regardless of their type or purpose. At the moment, the host application (or
the user, if the host app. can't do this itself) must distinguish between
VST plugins from DirectX plugins, and so on. If GMPI could identify plugins
by the different start-up function names (and possibly other methods), this
would make the use of plug-ins easier for both the end user and host
developers.

GMPI should appear to plugins as a host would appear to them. Maybe GMPI
could be a plugin standard itself? Although that's probably a bad idea.

The third category (end users) would probably not be too important to GMPI,
since it's the jobs of the host and plugins to provide the end user with a
way of actually "getting things done." GMPI should therefore be transparent
to the end-user.


I've tried to keep off-topic details out of this email, or to a minimum, to
just illustrate the different types of audience I think GMPI should be aimed
at, and how this could be possible.

-SB

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