[JDEV] plug-in architecture for WinJab client

[Bill Wilder]

Greetings,

Has any thought been given to WinJab having a well-defined extensibility
mechanism? This would enable external developers to leverage the Jabber
architecture through the WinJab client, and may also prove useful within the
WinJab team in some cases. Such a mechanism would make it easier for other
existing or future solutions to integrate with Jabber, increasing exposure
and mind share for the Jabber effort.

For starters, I can imagine support for hooking into the in & outbound
messages as events, the ability to filter messages, requesting a window
handle for drawing, getting informed when WinJab closes, and some mechanism
for end-users to control which plug-ins they want to allow. A natural way to
integrate might be with COM or ActiveX, allowing the plug-ins to be written
in a wide variety of languages with a range of tools.

I could help develop this idea further if others agree it has merit and a
reasonable change of being realized.

Thanks,
-Bill Wilder
bwilder at lifefx.com