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I have searched an found a little help on creating DLL files, but really nothing on making a plugin aware application. I am planning on writing a piece of software in C++.NET 2005. The software I am designing and will develop is going to be a toolkit for Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 edition. It will consist of multiple projects that interact with each other via windows messaging and/or a shared database. The core program this entire toolkit will focus around is the character creation/browser project. The main form will consist of displaying the data that would be seen on a standard character sheet.
The problem comes in when dealing with the supplemental books. Certain books like the Expanded Psionic Handbook, Tome of Magic, Magic Incarnum, and probably others either add or modify the basic character sheet in some way. In the instance of the Binder class from the Tome of Magic, the modification to the main character sheet is minimal. There is no reason to add a whole other form for just a few textboxes and a small list when it could easily be added to the main form. However, the controls should only be added to the form when the user has the appropriate plugin installed. This allows the user to only install and deal with the plugins they want without having do deal with everything else that they don't want. As the user buys another book, they can install the appropriate plugin for that book and the program will grow as their D&D library does. Or at least that is the plan.
I don't have any code written yet as I am still trying to design how this program will be broken up. I already planning on doing DLL files for the common functions that are used among the programs to include database access and other random functions. I haven't decided, but I will probably do some sort of config file or registry keys to keep track of which programs and plugins are installed.
What I really need right now is some good guides on creating plugin aware programs and how to modify forms from those plugins. Any help would be appreciated.
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