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From: "Ben A L Jemmett" <bal.jemmett@ukonline.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Interactive Fiction Timeline
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Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2001 01:09:55 GMT
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"John W. Kennedy" <jwkenne@attglobal.net> wrote in message
news:3BE35826.53988796@attglobal.net...
> Because it's portable to other operating systems.

On further perusal of the Netscape Plugin API (as found at
http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/communicator/plugin/index.htm),
it would seem that the Netscape plugin API offers a platform-independent
interface to streams, URLs, memory, Java and plugin access; the section I
looked at in detail (drawing and event handling) appears to be
platform-dependant in that:
a) the NPWindow structure actually change size and layout on different
platforms
b) the drawing area allocated for the plugin is not abstracted by the API in
any way, so you need different code for each platform to do the actual
drawing etc.

This lack of abstraction also applies to sound, which isn't even addressed
by the API.  So if your plugin uses sound or graphics it has to be written
for each platform differently anyway.

If this is what you mean by 'portable to other operating systems', then the
IE plugin API is too; IE plugins are simply ActiveX in-process servers,
which are just DLLs exporting a certain set of standard (across the entire
operating system) interfaces.

--
Regards,
Ben A L Jemmett.
(http://web.ukonline.co.uk/ben.jemmett/, http://www.deltasoft.com/)


