Pontech Control .NET

General Concept

A Multi-Purpose Plugin Extend-able Environment. Plugin's are loaded and appear in a drop menu. Once activated, a new tab will consume an instance of the plugin. Plugins will have the ability to access components of other Plugins, ie. Servo Slider Plugin relies on RS232 Comm. Plugin. Plugins developed for the Desktop can be utilized in a GUI-Less environment, i.e. Embedded Linux Controllers running Mono.

Plugin Ideas

Communication Plugins(RS232, Bluetooth, Remote Network)
GUI Control Forms for SV203, STP10x, HBC101(Sliders, EEPROM Config Forms, Terminal
Automated Testing Utilities
Gecko Powered Wiki Documentation Browser/Tech Support Form
SVBAS.NET & S-Record Loader.NET Plugin's!
RSS Feed of firmware updates with automated download and prep via S-Record Plugin/other
Plugin Grabber(Grab plugins via web from Trac/Subversion Repo's)
Plugin Editor(Check-out, Edit/Test, Check-in!) Pontech Control would become a very simple yet elegant concept rivaling Eclipse imho!
Private Customer Plugins…

Objective

Create an application which uses modules/plugins to adapt the application to serve multiple functions.

Status

I have a runtime which loads source files and compiles it into an Assembly Object. Any .NET language can be used(VB.NET, C#, Boo, etc). The Assembly Object's are currently stored in a hash referred to by filename. The current goal is to make the HashTable of Assembly Objects global(accessible to plugins themselves). And store the Assembly Object by a name found within the file as opposed to by filename¹⁾.

Information

Mono .NET Serial Example

Recommendations

Still need more information.

¹⁾

This would allow us to have a directory with two files: serial.boo(name:serial) and serial-old.boo(name:serial). We could easily load one or the other without having to modify code referring to the module named serial.