DesignInfo.txt

This short document describes the design of the application.

Structure:
Framework - contains the data definitions, interfaces and event argument definitions
Core - acts as a data container holding all application wide data and events
Application  - creates the core (engine) and initializes it
Plugins - contains the actual functionality of GAPP
Utils - general collection of classes that are commonly used by plugins like Live API
Additionally external libraries are used like a compression library and an sqlite library.

Although a plugin only needs a reference to Framework in order to be loaded as a plugin, most plugsins
are derived from Utils.BasePlugin.Plugin. This is much more convenient.

Basic concept:
The concept of GAPP is easy: All functionality is provided within plugins.
The Core is just a data container that triggers events when things changed.
Each plugin is independent at design time. If a plugin wants functionality of another plugin, it should use reflection.
The plugin cannot assume that another plugin is available.

Design constraints:
To simplify the design, almost all events from Core should be triggered on UI context.
This means that changing data, like adding geocaches, should prevent triggering events in case it is done in a separate thread.
To prevent data (e.q. Framework.Data.Geocache or Framework.Data.GeocacheCollection) from triggering events when changing data,
you can use the BeginUpdate(). After finishing modifying the data, you can call EndUpdate(). The EndUpdate will trigger an event
if data has changed. Therefore the EndData() should always be called within the UI context.

Utils contains helpers for this:
Utils.FrameworkDataUpdater. The constructor calls the BeginUpdate() on all collection of Core and the Dispose will call the EndUpdate()
usage:
using (FrameworkDataUpdater upd = new FrameworkDataUpdater(core)) //in UI context!
{
alter data (might be in separate thread)
}

Data storage:
Data that is not part of Core should be stored by the plugin itself. There are many examples of that. You can use XML or Sqlite e.g.
The data should generally be stored in the core.PluginDataPath