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Multi platform plug-in development made easy!

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7 Mar 20065 min read 102.1K   1.9K   63  
How to use and develop plug-ins for multiple platforms.
--- About SPL:
--------------

The SPL (Simple Plugin Layer) library is an open source SDK (LGPL license) 
for plugin development. With SPL you can extend every application written in C/C++ to 
use your own plugins, SPL will do all the managing, loading and unloading stuff for you. 
Additionally, the whole framework is fully multi-platform capable, so you don't have to 
develop multiple versions of the same plugin for platforms provided by SPL.


--- Features of SPL:
--------------------

	- Open Source, uses LGPL license
	- Free, costs absolutely nothing, even for commercial use
	- Platform independent architecture
	- Implementations for Linux and Win32 available, more platforms coming soon ...
	- Full Doxygen-/Javadoc-compatible documentation
	- Optional macros for fast and easy plugin development
	- Variable plugin arguments for extensible APIs
	- Thread-safety for complex applications
	- Uses STL library for stable and portable containers
	- Object-oriented design, easy to extend
	- Customizable to 32- or 64-bit systems
	- Completely written in C++, no other dependencies except STL needed
	- Buildable as static/shared library or DLL (only Win32)
	- Various examples for all platforms explaining the development step by step
	- Source code written in uniform style
	- ...


--- Documentation:
------------------

Documentation generated with Doxygen can be found in /documents/release.
A HTML as well as a Windows .CHM file is currently available.


--- Version history:
--------------------

The version history can be found in the file "history.txt".


--- Credits:
------------

SPL was developed by Ren� Stuhr and Andreas Loeffler in spring 2004.


--- Contact:
------------

Web: 	http://www.unitedbytes.de
E-Mail: info@unitedbytes.de

For updates, forum and contacting the developers please visit the website
mentioned above.


--- Support
-----------

SPL is provided free of charge but without any warranty or support. 

If you have difficulties using SPL, you can find resources at
http://www.unitedbytes.de

You can also ask for help in the official forum and someone will try to help.
But remember; everyone involved in SPL are volunteers, as in "does not get paid".
So please be friendly and your chances of getting help will increase.

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Written By
Web Developer
Germany Germany
I was born in 1982 near Stuttgart / Germany and began my first steps in programming computers at the age of only nine years on an old Commodore CBM 7072. In 2002 I finished my education as IT specialist for software engineering and did my civillian service afterwards. Currently I'm working as leader of the software division in a bigger company located in south west Germany, mainly on software development and research projects for multimedia terminals and user recognition/verification systems.

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