need help for plugin programming

[L.B.]

Hi,

I want to write a plugin for LCD Smartie and a program written by myself in C called "Control Center". This program allows you to share information (temperatures, fan speeds, etc. of your system) with other applications, for example LCD Smartie to show these information on your display. But I have a problem getting started with plugin programming, because I couldn´t find somthing like a tutorial, only the list of functions, which is not enough to write this plugin. If I´ve understood correctly, I´ve to write a dll, which will be token to smarties plugin directory, including those functions needed to show the system information.

Could anyone help me getting started with plugin programming? Or is there a tutorial or anything like that?


Thanks.

[mattcro]

There isn't really a tutorial for plugins, but there are a few topics in this section of the forum with info. http://forums.lcdsmartie.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1419 has details of what the functions do, and there are some templates for various languages (VS 2005, 2008, VC6...).

There also some plugins with full source code that you can adapt. Plugins by ReverseEngineered and me have source code in Visual C. Look for RegExp, WinampCtrl, Swap/Scroll/If and others.

[L.B.]

Thank you.

I already saw this topic with the functions and tested them in the template for C/C++. But I wasn´t able to make a dll of this code, however I think this is a general problem, bacause I haven`t made a dll before.

[mattcro]

It's a while since I did any plugin programming... the main thing is to set the project target type correctly - you need to tell the compiler to make a Windows DLL instead of the normal EXE. What is your programming environment? Visual C? What version?

[L.B.]

I´m using the latest version of Dev C++. This program offers the project option "dynamic link library (dll)", which I think is the correct one for making those plugin dll files.

[mattcro]

I've never used Dev C++ but it sounds like you're on the right track with the DLL project option. If you get it all working, please post some info here on how you set it up etc so others can develop plugins in DevC++ too.

[L.B.]

Ok, I´ll try writing the dll on Dev C++ and post some information about the project options.

Thanks for your help so far.


L.B.