It seems a pretty common requirement to have framework/shell
applications that can work with various modules - ie an accounting
packages that support various optional bits as well as support user
customization of reports etc. Its quite suprising then that there seems
to be a lack of good tools to handle this process.
Personally I think MS Scripting Engine + Com can lead to problems in the
long term such as too much code ending up being written in script -
imagine in a few years when you get a few thousand lines of perl tying
your app together + various versions of COM objects scattered around
<shudder>.
If your DLL's work then why not stick with them? - as MS have proven,
bloatware is no barrier to success and 150K DLL's is not exactly a worry
when your target machines probably have 10Mb+ of wallpaper alone.
Also take a look at TCL/TK for scripting - we have experimented with it
as you can load a script that constructs the UI on the fly & calls DLL's
or COM objects to do the work. This means that each client could simply
have a (text) script that constructs the application that calls the
(Delphi coded) engine.
Looks like a powerful concept and there are some good example of the
approach in the OpenSource world where people take things like a GNU C++
backend compiler or SQL DB and construct a nice front end using TCL/TK.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Derricutt [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Wednesday, 10 March 1999 15:10
> To: Multiple recipients of list delphi
> Subject: [DUG]: Plugins/MS Scripting Host
>
>
> Hiya - has anyone here written any applications that use "plugins" and
> "extensions" to extend the use of their application?
>
> Currently I'm using dynamically loaded .dll's to provide a
> plugin system
> for my application, only, delphi bloats .dll's quite a bit making each
> one around 100-150k, which is compleatly overkill when the function
> being called is only 5-10 lines long (the functions often create a
> TQuery and connect into a database to perform lookups).
>
> Has anyone experimented with using other forms of plugin
> methods?? I've
> thought about looking at using a scripting language, such as MS
> Scripting Host (where can I download that from anyway?) but
> wasn't sure
> about how I could use that to link back into my database to perform
> calculation lookups.
>
> Does anyone know how it works?? Can I make certain
> variables/events/objects in my application available to the
> MS Scripting
> engine or what???
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Mark Derricutt
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> -------------
> New Zealand Delphi Users group - Delphi List -
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Website: http://www.delphi.org.nz
>
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