Need some explanation re: Plugins

[mr_unreliable]

I noticed an extremely brief mention of Plugins in the beta doc.

Then I searched here, and found some discussion, and a couple of actual plugins offered.

There was also some discussion about why anybody would need a plugin, as long as one could DLLCall a dll entry point. There was also mention that (maybe someday - but not now) a plugin would be better than an external dll, as it would be incorporated within the exe, thus making distribution easier.

I also found and downloaded the "plugin SDK".

Still, I'm not satisfied.

I couldn't find any description about what a plugin (for autoit) should be,

how it should be written, why one would use a plugin instead of an ocx,

etc. As best I could surmise, if you liked to code in c++, and you wished

to have some feature that was/is currently missing from autoit, then a plugin

would be your weapon of choice. Is that correct???

Also, I noted that the plugins which were offered here didn't come with any source code.

Is this acceptable to the autoit community? Over in the wsh/vbs world, people are extremely sensitive about utilities which are offered without source. More specifically, they are concerned about malicious code being inserted into their systems by "black box" type code (i.e., compiled/binary code where you don't know what's going on under-the-covers, an ideal situation for concealing malware).

cheers, jw

[Jos]

Still, I'm not satisfied.

I couldn't find any description about what a plugin (for autoit) should be,

how it should be written, why one would use a plugin instead of an ocx,

etc. As best I could surmise, if you liked to code in c++, and you wished

to have some feature that was/is currently missing from autoit, then a plugin

would be your weapon of choice. Is that correct???

The SDK contains an example project for VC7 and VC6 showing how it should be created.

The advantages is that the Plugin functions work like all the other build-in functions making it a lot easier than using DLL Calls.

Also, I noted that the plug-ins which were offered here didn't come with any source code.

Is this acceptable to the autoit community? Over in the wsh/vbs world, people are extremely sensitive about utilities which are offered without source. More specifically, they are concerned about malicious code being inserted into their systems by "black box" type code (i.e., compiled/binary code where you don't know what's going on under-the-covers, an ideal situation for concealing malware).

Don't know about the everybody else but I won't run ANY program/dll/ocx unless i kinda thrust where its coming from or have its source. same counts for posted command-line utilities and Compiled autoit scripts.

So its up to the readers not to just download and run whatever is posted, even when advertised as a NEW COOL Plug-in ..

Edited December 30, 2005 by JdeB