Re: MCL Netscape Plugin?

To: zippy@ai.mit.edu
Subject: Re: MCL Netscape Plugin?
From: steve.mitchell@pobox.com (Steven L Mitchell)
Date: Mon, 1 Jul 1996 02:57:07 -0400
Cc: www-cl@ai.mit.edu, info-mcl@digitool.com
Sender: owner-www-cl@ai.mit.edu

At 8:54 PM 6/30/96, zippy@ai.mit.edu wrote:
>If anyone is haboring an urge to write an MCL plug-in to Netscape...
>What one probably wants is a plug-in that knows how to communicate
>with MCL,
>
At the moment, just about the only thing plugins can do is receive a
particular type of file, which they display or play or whatever. "Helper
applications" run as separate programs and can do the same thing (within
their own window rather than the Netscape browser window); not surprisingly
they are configured through the same Settings dialog as plugins. So it is
not necessary to write a plugin, just configure Netscape to recognize the
desired MIME-type and launch your MCL application with a file of the
corresponding file type.

> say via Apple Events at first,
>
It is my understanding that plugins (any kind, not just Netscape's) can
send but can not receive AppleEvents, not even replies. I'd like to be
wrong about this...

> rather than trying to coerce MCL into running as a plugin.
>
Not possible anyway; plugins are Shared Libraries on the PPC and standalone
code resources on the 68K Mac, neither of which can be developed in MCL.

If anyone in the MCL community does decide to write a Netscape plugin, I'd
be interested in hearing about it. Currently I'm working on the Mac-native
versions of the Live3D VRML browser plug-in, which will be ready for
general testing in a few weeks - monitor our newsgroup:
snews://secnews.netscape.com/netscape.live3d

Happy hacking,
Steve                                   steve.mitchell@pobox.com
Live3D Mac Support            Netscape (formerly Paper Software)
Visit the Live3D site at: <http://home.netscape.com/eng/live3d/>

Follow-Ups:

Re: MCL Netscape Plugin?

From: Rainer Joswig <joswig@vampire.lavielle.com>