Hey guys,
I've been doing some thinking since Beaudog mentioned this:
I caution not to fall into the trap that Weather Display and to some extent Cumulus have in trying to make the program do everything that every possible user might want.
I think a lot of WX software developers fall into the same trap. I can see how adding more features will attract more people to the software, but what inevitably happens is the configuration for them turns into a mess. The other thing that happens is that every user winds up with features they don't use, which wouldn't be a problem if they didn't contribute to the cluttering of the configuration window/windows.
I believe that any program can get to the point of having so many features that it actually becomes unusable, or at the very least difficult to get the most basic of things setup. I think this is especially true for someone who is new to the software.
As a former user of Weather Display and Cumulus I've seen that happen. Its actually one of the contributing factors to what made me move to other software, and I don't want to do the same to mine. I will admit that I've actually caught myself starting to fall into that trap.
So I've gotten the idea to start utilizing addons for features instead of hard coding them in. This would allow people to have just the features they want, resulting in fewer unnecessary configuration settings cluttering up things. I also think that it would really open-up my software by allowing other people to create their own features if they don't already exist.
Now I've never created any addons or programs that use them for that matter, and was wondering if anybody around here has any experience with designing a program to utilize plugins and would be willing to give a few pointers on implementing them?