[vlc-devel] Re: Developing VLC as plugin embedded in MS IE

[Gildas Bazin]

On Wednesday 03 December 2003 21:31, Yinon Ehrlich wrote:
> My name is Yinon Ehrlich and I'm working on a project (as a student) at
> www.VidyaTel.com <http://www.vidyatel.com/> .
> 
> The main part of the project is to write VLC as plugin (=activeX) to MS
> IE (to let VLC be embedded within Explorer - like the mozilla plugin)
> 

That would be nice indeed :)

> 
> I read the WIN32 HOWTO compile on VLC site & mails on VideoLan
> mailing-list about:
> 
> .      Turning VLC into plugin to IE (February, 2002).
> 
> .      Compile VLC under MS Visual C (last May).
> 
> I would like to ask some questions about it:
> 
> 1. Does exists any way to build an ActiveX without MS Visual C (free
> compiler & IDE is better)?
> 

I'm almost sure that you can build an ActiveX component with mingw as well.

>
> 2. If yes, does that tool equals to MS Visual C at simplicity &
> shortcuts of building an ActiveX components?
> 

Certainly not.

The main advantages of using mingw are:
- Free/Open source compiler
- Cross platform (you can compile your win32 applications under linux).
- This is the tool we use/support ourselves.

But ease of use will not be part of these advantages (well at least if you 
are a win32 programmer and don't know much about unix tools).

>
> 3. If one of the last answers is "NO", my last question is:
> 
> According to the mailing lists on May, where said that currently there
> is no way to compile full version of VLC on Visual C - 
> 

True, a few important 3rd party libraries we use don't compile under MSVC 
(main one being ffmpeg).

What you can do though is to compile only these applications with mingw and 
then tweak our msvc project files to use these libraries.

>             There is any way to turn VLC into an ActiveX plugin?
> 

Personnaly I would advise going the mingw way. It will be a bit tougher but 
at least the plugin will integrate perfectly with our build system so we 
will be able to maintain it when necessary.

The best way to start would be to find code examples of an ActiveX plugin 
and start from this base.

--
Gildas

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