On 3 Jan 2004, Ted Gould wrote:
There has been some discussion about what to name the things that add functionality to Inkscape, but are not part of the core. I've always called these modules, while there was discussion on this before - it seems that it is time to change the name. I don't really care what we call stuff, I just want everyone to use the same terms. Here's what I'm proposing:
extension --- a chunk of functionality that extends the functionality of Inkscape, but is not part of the core code.
script --- an extension that is built using STDIO to pass SVG data and change it in some way.
extension system --- The code that deals with all of the glue between extensions and the core.
Complaints? Comments? Additions? Ideas?
This sounds good to me. Mental and I had discussed this when I wrote the namespaces proposal, and also chose 'extension'. We also considered 'plugin'. (See SubsystemRearchitecture)
We had briefly toyed with the idea of dividing out the Inkscape::Extension namespace according to different types of extensions, but decided to leave that 'til later since it was beyond the scope of what we were doing. We were also uncertain if sub-namespaces were even necessary. You might want to give some thought to it, though. We identified a few things that could be covered by this namespace: import/export mechanisms, GUI plugins, stdin/stdout programs, language bindings, etc.
Bryce