view doc/plugin-ids.dox @ 17733:d7b50cac1c7a

This is a patch from Chris Davies to make Bonjour work on Windows using the Apple Bonjour framework. It turns out that the actual DNS-SD library is (3 clause) BSD licensed, so we can use it. There are a few changes by me, mainly to fix the howl implementation. Fixes #1117 . There appear to be a few bugs, but I believe that they were also present previously. I'm hoping to do some more tweaking before the next release. The howl implementation will eventually be supersceded by a native avahi implementation, so I opted for a somewhat dirty hack to enable it instead of doing something with config.h.

/** @page plugin-ids Plugin IDs

 @section Introduction
  Every plugin contains a unique identifier to prevent duplicate plugin
  loading and conflicts. This, which will be called a plugin ID from here
  on, must follow a specific format. This format categorizes a plugin and
  makes duplicate IDs unlikely.


 @section Format
  The basic format of a plugin ID is as follows:

  <tt><i>type</i>-<i>username</i>-<i>pluginname</i></tt>

  The @em type indicator specifies the type of plugin. This must be one
  of the following:

    - core      - Core plugin, capable of being loaded in any program using
                  libpurple. It must not use any UI-specific code.
    - prpl      - Protocol plugin, providing additional protocols to
                  connect to.
    - lopl      - Loader plugin, which loads scripts as plugins (like Perl
                  or TCL).
    - gtk       - GTK+ 2.x plugin. It may use GTK+ code, but cannot use any
                  window toolkit code (such as X11 or Win32).
    - gtk-x11   - GTK+ 2.x plugin using X11 code.
    - gtk-win32 - GTK+ 2.x plugin using Win32 code.
    - qpe       - Gaim for Qtopia plugin.

  The @em username must be a unique identifier for that person. It
  @em should be your SourceForge ID. Do @em not leave this field
  blank.

  The @em pluginname is the name of your plugin. It can be whatever you like,
  though it's common to keep it all lowercase. Do not use spaces! If you
  want a space, use a '-'. Please do not put a version indicator in the ID.
  The PurplePlugin structure already has a field for this.


 @section plugin-db Plugin Database
  Although it doesn't exist yet, in time there will be a plugin database
  on the Pidgin website, where users can download and install new plugins.
  Plugins will be accessed by your plugin ID, which is one reason why it
  must be unique. 

 */

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