How is User Contributed Code handled?

26 November 2011: Our aim of making PiXCL 10 source code available is to stimulate a wider use of the PiXCL language amongst developers, to extend its usability and functionality and provide it to end users.

As stated on other pages , the most common user update is expected to be new commands embedded in the PiXCL keyword list, followed by extension command DLLs.

Here's some ideas of what new sets of commands might do...

support the Windows Seven sensors API
provide some support for wxWidgets
provide support for GTK+, and
- perhaps refactor PiXCL to produce a Linux version
implement new image processing commands

PiXCL Extension Commands DLLs can be used to support any hardware with its own API.

implement the OpenCV library functions.

The PiXCL parser codes, the core of the interpreter, are mature and very robust, but there is room for improvement. For example,

support local variable scope within functions would quite easy to do and is already partially documented.
the main EXE could be broken down into a smaller EXE and one or two DLLs.

Updating the code base to add new commands is very easy, requiring new code in just two source files. For a new command code section to be added in to the code base, several criteria have to be met.

it has to provide a generally useful functionality, and not duplicate an existing function.
- if an existing function is modified, this has to fix a bug or provide a significant performance benefit.
it has to comply as close as possible with the coding standard of the existing code base.
a text file containing the suggested help text is provided. If there is any special algorithm used it should be described in enough detail to be understandable. This text would be used by us to create an updated help file in CHM format.

We hope to develop a User Forum, and would like to get some input from other users on the value or otherwise of all new commands. It's still unclear what the best approach will be on this.

Since we are the copyright owners, we do expect to be the final arbiter on what is added or not to the code base.
- In practice, and based on our experience, most new commands are useful, and are added almost immediately.
Perhaps creating some subdirectories of donated commands would be a fair compromise, and let users vote.

New and current versions of the code will be available on a regular basis.