Plug-in based software frameworks enforce modularity due to their design. However, developers are still confronted with writing code foreign to the functional domain when defining a plug-in's external interface or communicating with the main application.
VistaLab is a modular framework for developing image processing algorithms with minimal overhead. New plug-ins can be easily distributed in binary form --- they are realized as shared libraries. This way, reuse can be achived in an easy way. Furthermore, the code for integrating own C++-classes into a plug-in is kept at a minimum via generative programming. Not only does it help developers concentrate on implementing new functionality in the image processing domain (and not in writing configuration dialogs), it also enables plug-ins to be kept in a future-proof way as no data structures defined by the framework have to be known - they are built automatically via generative techniques. This feature makes developing new image processing modules a child's play.
Download
See sourceforge Project Page for current versions. Source code for unix systems is available as a .tar.gz-archive. For MS Windows, a binary installer is provided.Documentation
The MS windows installer comes with documentation in pdf. There is also a separate package on the project page which contains the two documents (tutorials for using VistaLab and developing own plugins).License
VistaLab is released under GPL with a special exception: Own plugins may have their own terms under certain conditions (see file License for more information).Requirements:
Linux / Unix / MacOS X (building from source):
- wxWidgets 2.6 (with OpenGL support)
- libxml2
- gettext
- gcc 2.95/3.0 and above
Microsoft Windows (for developing own plugins using the binary installer):
- MS Visual Studio 2005 (with MSVC8.0)
- Alternative: autotools (automake, autoconf, libtool) and gcc 2.95/3.0 or above
- wxWidgets 2.6.2 - if plugins use GUI functionality such as dialogs (monolithic unicode build with OpenGL support).