[Uim] Meaning of module and plugin (Re: Glossary)

[YamaKen]

#I forgot whether a discussion about it is already
#existing. Please connect this message to appropriate thread if
#so.

At Mon, 15 Aug 2005 03:28:44 +0900,
tkng at xem.jp wrote:
> * plugin
> 
> Plugin is a mechanism to extend uim's Scheme interpreter with C. Mainly
> used to write a glue code between uim and conversion software such as Anthy.

Since the term 'plugin' often means that "a extension for an
application that CONSIST OF SINGLE OBJECT FILE", I think that
foo.so for uim should be renamed to other than 'plugin' to avoid
confusions.

As I described below, uim sometimes requires multiple files to
enable an extension. This conflicts with the ordinary plugin
concept.


> * module
> 
> Once I planned to use this word as a name of the part which handle
> actual input and convert. But this word seems causing misunderstanding,
> therefore I decided that I don't give a clear definition of this word
> for now.

For future consideration, my current recognition is:

- A unit for a set of codes that allows install/deinstall and
  enable/disable based on the unit

- A module may or may not contain arbitrary number of input
  method(s)

See following examples based on above definition,

1. anthy

  anthy module will be consist of these 3 files. Enabling the
  module causes register-im as a side effect

  anthy/anthy.so
  anthy/anthy.scm
  anthy/anthy-custom.scm

2. m17nlib

  m17nlib module will also be consist of 3 files. But enabling
  the module causes multiple register-im even if only one module
  has been enabled.

  m17nlib/m17nlib.so
  m17nlib/m17nlib.scm
  m17nlib/m17nlib-custom.scm

3. regexp

  A regexp module will be also a complete module although it
  does not contain input method. It will be consist of only one
  file, and enabling it only causes ordinary procedure
  definition(s).

  regexp/regexp.so

-------------------------------
YamaKen  yamaken at bp.iij4u.or.jp