All,
Some years ago I developped a plugin framework for the software company
I still work for. The plugin framework was a hit because anyone who
wanted to add functionality could easily do so, without touching the
existing code base.
Now, 3 years down the track, it has become problematic..... it is a
maintenance nightmare, and very confusing for users.
Rather than check if someone had already developed a plugin that
practically fulfilled their requirements (and extending it), developers
would just write a new one from scratch.... and add it to the pool.
Clients became confused and irritated at constantly having to sift
through dozens of lists of plugins, many of which did the same thing in
slightly different ways. Often, a client would find 5 or 6 plugins that
each did 95% of what they wanted, but never one that did it all.
So we started to reconcile the plugins ..... and found that we could
easily break down 120 plugins down to a list of less than 30 .... much
less confusion and each plugin was actually much more powerful (because
it satisfied a broader range of needs).
... constantly searching through lists of externals/abstractions/libs
for the thing that does just what I want, I cant help but think that PD
could benefit from such an effort. It is a difficult effort because
there has to be some kind of committe which officially accepts an
external/abstraction/lib into an official list... and then anytime
someone develops a similar object that adds slightly to the existing
functionality then someone else would have to roll those
changes/extensions in. .... but it would make PD much more powerful and
easy to use.
Etienne