A term used in the Pluto world for this kind of thing is an "SPI" - "System Program Interface" - A highly structured and well specified interface designed to allow something to plug into or be plugged into the "System" - but not an interface for "Applications".
In Pluto the idea of SPI also included the contract that it might change slowly - a little faster than the expected rate of non-upwards compatible change in an API. It made a lot of sense. I am not sure SPI is the best word here - but I through it out for consideration by folks more "considered" than me :) /Chuck On Feb 24, 2010, at 9:49 AM, Ross Gardler wrote: > A good while ago we seemed to agree that the name "plugin" is not a good > name. It creates considerable confusion for people new to Wookie as it seems > to imply that it is a way of plugging in functionality to Wookie. In fact it > is about creating plugins for other platforms so they can work with Wookie > widgets. > > On the other hand, from the point of view of the finished code they are > indeed plugins (just not for Wookie). > > With my proposal to create frameworks for different languages to allow easy > plugin development this problem becomes more accute. We will have code in our > repository that refers to plugins. > > I've started hacking a Java implementation of my framework proposal. in this > work I have used the package name: > > org.apache.wookie.connector.framework > > The idea is we can say something like "To implement a plugin for your > preferred environment select the appropriate connector framework for your > programming language and implement the IWookiePluginService class." > > Comments/thoughts on this? > > Ross > >
