blender/source/blender/blenpluginapi/documentation.h
2002-10-30 02:07:20 +00:00

73 lines
2.8 KiB
C

/**
* $Id$
*
* ***** BEGIN GPL/BL DUAL LICENSE BLOCK *****
*
* This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
* modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
* as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
* of the License, or (at your option) any later version. The Blender
* Foundation also sells licenses for use in proprietary software under
* the Blender License. See http://www.blender.org/BL/ for information
* about this.
*
* This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
* but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
* MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
* GNU General Public License for more details.
*
* You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
* along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,
* Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
*
* The Original Code is Copyright (C) 2001-2002 by NaN Holding BV.
* All rights reserved.
*
* The Original Code is: all of this file.
*
* Contributor(s): none yet.
*
* ***** END GPL/BL DUAL LICENSE BLOCK *****
*
* @mainpage plugin API - the access point for texture and sequence
* plugins
*
* @section about About the plugin API
*
* This API wraps functions that are used by texture and sequence
* plugins. They are explicitly wrapped in order to make the
* dependencies to the rest of the system clear.
*
* @section issues Known issues with the plugin API
*
* - It can be difficult at times to get access to the API functions
* linked into the final executable. On gcc, the -fpic and -shared
* flags take care of this. On Irix, -shared is needed, but you also
* need a reference to the function to get the handle. This has
* momentarily been taken care of by pluginapi_force_ref().
*
* - Plugins need to define three functions that are needed for
* version bookkeeping and information. The plugin loading code
* explicitly checks for these functions. The nanes depend on whether
* it is a texture or sequence plugin.
*
* - The plugin loading occurs in sequence.c and texture.c. The
* following functions are involved:
* - open_plugin_seq() (used in readfile.c, editseq.c, sequence.c)
* - add_plugin_seq() (used in editseq.c, sequence.c)
* - free_plugin_seq() (used in editseq.c, sequence.c)
* - open_plugin_tex() (used in texture.c, readfile.c)
* - add_plugin_tex() (used in texture.c, buttons.c)
* - free_plugin_tex() (used in texture.c, buttons.c)
* - test_dlerr() (used in texture.c, sequence.c)
* Since the plugins are about to phase out, we will not sanitize this
* code. It will be removed as soon as the replacing system is in
* place.
*
* @section dependencies Dependencies
*
* The plugins wraps functions from IMB and BLI. In addition, they
* define some useful variables.
* */