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