<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >Clean core/plugins separation</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.79;charset=UTF-8"><LINK REL="HOME" TITLE="GStreamer Application Development Manual (0.10.36)" HREF="index.html"><LINK REL="UP" TITLE="Design principles" HREF="chapter-motivation.html"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="High performance" HREF="section-goals-performance.html"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="Provide a framework for codec experimentation" HREF="section-goals-testbed.html"></HEAD ><BODY CLASS="section" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#840084" ALINK="#0000FF" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE SUMMARY="Header navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="3" ALIGN="center" ><SPAN CLASS="application" >GStreamer</SPAN > Application Development Manual (0.10.36)</TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="section-goals-performance.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="80%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" >Chapter 2. Design principles</TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="section-goals-testbed.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><DIV CLASS="section" ><H1 CLASS="section" ><A NAME="section-goals-separation" >2.6. Clean core/plugins separation</A ></H1 ><P > The core of <SPAN CLASS="application" >GStreamer</SPAN > is essentially media-agnostic. It only knows about bytes and blocks, and only contains basic elements. The core of <SPAN CLASS="application" >GStreamer</SPAN > is functional enough to even implement low-level system tools, like cp. </P ><P > All of the media handling functionality is provided by plugins external to the core. These tell the core how to handle specific types of media. </P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE SUMMARY="Footer navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="section-goals-performance.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="index.html" ACCESSKEY="H" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="section-goals-testbed.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >High performance</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="chapter-motivation.html" ACCESSKEY="U" >Up</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >Provide a framework for codec experimentation</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >