OSGI based plug-ins
From Freeplane - free mind mapping and knowledge management software
FreeMind has a proprietary extension mechanism further called plug-ins. FreeMind plug-ins are automatically loaded by FreeMind using their XML descriptors. This mechanism should be replaced because of the following reasons:
- Current plug-in design defines many additional classes and interfaces which are actually not necessary and can be replaced by interface used in the freemind kernel.
- Current XML descriptors have many not documented attributes. There is no need in big XML descriptors any more because FreePlane API allowing plug-ins to seemlesly integrate themselves to the main program e.g. add and serialize new node properties and add their own actions to Freeplane menus/toolbars.
- Using of OSGI framework is a standard way to organize plug-ins in external projects with excellent IDE support.
Currently I am converting all FreeMind hooks into usual packages which reside inside of freemind.jar. Later they should be converted to OSGI packages. This task should prepare this connection. Now I prefer knopflerfish as a framework.
