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Writing plugins for XnView

Posted: Sun Apr 14, 2013 7:39 am
by mschnell
Is it possible to enhance the features of XnView doing my own programming ?

I am a programmer myself and I think I am able to quickly learn to work with any decent programming language and with any decent interface to a host system.

So I would be very happy to be allowed to add some special features to XnView, in case I decide to use it. In fact I would be happy to publish any results of that work as open source for XnView officials and all users freely using it.

Does XnView allow for a kind of Plugins ? Is there a powerful and decently documented interface ? I see there a User group on that behalf, but did not dive into same yet. I did find a manual that seems to include information about plugins, but I cant read French.

Can XnView be handles in a kind of open source way (integrating "plugins" by recompiling) ?

I also found the thread "Lets talk about plugins" here in FAQ, but it does not seem to handle how to write plugins and what they can be made to do.


Later Edit:
I did find the PluginSDK zip file and took a short look into it.
Seemingly you can write plugins using C and Delphi. This would be very good news for me, as - while I in fact mostly do C for embedded programming - for working on a PC I prefer Delphi Language.
OTOH, Delphi only can be used on Windows, and a main benefit of XnView for me is that it can be used on Linux.
So my question is if the "Delphi" SDK can be used with Lazarus/fpc (a Delphi work-alike that runs on many systems including Window, Linux, and Mac).
BTW.: is XnView done in Delphi (and XnViewMP in Lazarus/fpc ?) I would consider this a great Plus.



What do you suggest ?

Thanks-
-Michael

Re: Writing plugins

Posted: Mon Apr 15, 2013 12:24 pm
by xnview
mschnell wrote: OTOH, Delphi only can be used on Windows, and a main benefit of XnView for me is that it can be used on Linux.
So my question is if the "Delphi" SDK can be used with Lazarus/fpc (a Delphi work-alike that runs on many systems including Window, Linux, and Mac).
Sorry but i don't know

Re: Writing plugins

Posted: Mon Apr 15, 2013 8:10 pm
by mschnell
In fact at the first glance it looks as if the plugin interface is just a dll interface using functions with stcall calling covention.

So it can be used by most programming languages including C, Delphi and Lazarus/FPC.

The function heades provided in the Delphi sources can easily be used with Lazarus/FPV. So no problem here.

OTOH it seems that the Plugin SDK is dedicated to Windows (dll) and I did not find any documentation regarding doing plugins for Linux (.so-files)

-Michael
(sorry but I can't read any documentation in French language)

Re: Writing plugins

Posted: Tue Apr 16, 2013 2:50 am
by xnview
Linux? Currently Plugins are only for XnView classic not XnViewMP

Re: Writing plugins

Posted: Tue Apr 16, 2013 7:35 pm
by mschnell
That is bad news indeed.

But I suppose the plugin interface will be available when coming nearer to v1.0

-Michael

Re: Writing plugins

Posted: Thu Apr 18, 2013 9:16 am
by xnview
Yes, i'll add better plugins support in XnViewMP