Hooks in Base Code

Giles Jones giles.jones at zen.co.uk
Thu Jul 19 00:40:17 CEST 2007


On 18 Jul 2007, at 23:03, Jim McDonald wrote:
>
>
>    If the monolithic approach is out then some sort of modular  
> approach is required.  The most obvious example out there today is  
> Firefox, which comes in a relatively simple base configuration but  
> provides any number of hooks to allow people to write their own  
> extensions on top of the base code and as such to alter the  
> functionality of the product very extensively.  If we want this  
> openmoko to be as free as possible then it also needs to be as easy  
> as possible for people to extend, and this is the most likely way  
> of doing it.
>
>    I know that there are a lot of potential problems that need to  
> be addressed when building this out but if there is a vision from  
> the start as to how this would work then it would go a long way to  
> making the final product the 'phone that we are all dreaming of,  
> regardless of the fact that those dreams are often divergent from  
> others if not totally exclusive.  So my questions are there plans  
> to include these hooks, and if not can it be considered?
>
>    Or is there another way to do this other than hooks?


You have to modularise and split the applications into interface and  
the engine code as much as possible. If clever enough you could even  
define the interface layout using definition files in XML or some  
other trendy file format :)

I know that the Home page on Windows Mobile Smartphone edition is  
just an XML file which can contain links to plugins.







More information about the community mailing list