On 2006-10-18 09:07+0200 Arjen Markus wrote: > Sometime ago, Geoffrey posted his idea of an alternative implementation of > dynamic drivers. I replied that it looked - the method at least - a lot like > the > implementation of "stubs" in Tcl. These work on all platforms that Tcl is > available on. Perhaps we should start looking at that? That does not seem > to involve the complexities of libtool/libltdl.
Fundamentally, libplplot will still have to dynamically load the plug-in devices no matter how those devices are implemented. (Otherwise, we are back to static devices that are part of libplplot that are all automatically loaded along with the rest of libplplot by the run-time loader at run time regardless of whether the user needs all devices or not.) Given that dynamic loading must be done, the problem is that each platform typically has a different API for dynamic loading. libltdl solves this cross-platform issue by wrapping all API's in a standard API which libplplot calls. There are other free libraries (for example, Trolltech has QLibrary, [http://doc.trolltech.com/3.0/qlibrary.html] which KDE has recently switched to) which do the same job, but I think fundamentally we must continue to use libltdl or some equivalent to dynamically load plug-in devices in a cross-platform way regardless of how those devices are implemented. Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.org); the Yorick front-end to PLplot (yplot.sf.net); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
