Re: [MacPerl] Plug-ins / Applets

[pvhp@forte.com (Peter Prymmer)]

angus@pobox.com, lauzzana@netcom.com, mac-perl@iis.ee.ethz.ch
Subj:	Re: [MacPerl] Plug-ins / Applets

Angus McIntyre writes recently:

!At 4:49 pm +0200 23.04.97, Raymond Lauzzana wrote:
!> ... is there a way to write Netscape 'plug-ins' in Perl? Is that what
!>'droplets' are?
!
!Maybe and no.
!
!First, the second question. Droplets are not NetScape plug-ins. MacPerl
!droplets are simply like AppleScript droplets (oh, what a useful
!explanation *that* is). What I mean is that they behave like miniature
!drag-and-drop applications in the Finder. You drop files on 'em, and stuff
!happens. They simply kick MacPerl into life and get it to process whatever
!script is enshrined in the droplet, feeding it as arguments the files that
!were dropped.
!
!Second, the first question. The answer is 'Maybe'. We already have the
!example of MacPerl BBEdit extensions, where Matthias has written a C
!wrapper that calls MacPerl to execute a script when the relevant extension
!is invoked by BBEdit. It works, it works well, and it allows you to do
!insanely complex things very easily.
!
!A NetScape plug-in would be something similar. NetScape plug-ins aren't
!that hard to write (he said, having never written one, but having read a
!MacTech article about it just recently - November '96, if I recall
!correctly). It shouldn't be beyond Matthias's talents to build a similar
!shell for plug-ins (while simultaneously completing his PhD thesis and
!leaping backwards through hoops of fire with a rose held in his teeth).
!
!The problem is that what BBEdit extensions need to do is relatively simple
!and well-defined; they get to process text and give it back. NetScape
!plug-ins must accept content of some unspecified form, draw a
!representation in an area on the browser window and process user
!interaction (leading to more drawing, and perhaps more content as well),
!all without causing NetScape to explode (which is no mean trick anyway, to
!judge by the number of times I've had to reboot over the last few days
!thanks to NetScape). And the user will probably have to have MacPerl
!installed to make it work.
!
!Maybe Matthias's new Mac GUI components would make this doable, maybe they
!won't. I'm not holding my breath. My conclusion would be that it's feasible
!in theory, but not really something you'd want to do in practice.
!
!	A

As a proof of principle I'd like to point out that perl plug-ins for Netscape 
running on X (unix, sorry not on Mac (err unless you run X on your Mac)) have 
already been done - although the last time I looked it had been done with 
older versions of netscape.  
See Stan Melax's plugin at:

   http://www.arc.ab.ca/vr/opengl/plugin.html

Note that it proposes the MIME type "application/perl-opengl" to use the OpenGL 
3D graphics module for perl (see http://www.arc.ab.ca/vr/opengl/ )

Peter Prymmer


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