For a while now Windower has tried to move away from plugins and towards addons. The reasons for that are the following:
- Addons are written in Lua and Lua is easier to develop in than C++. It's easier for new developers to get a hang of it and contribute.
- Addons do not need to be recompiled. After a FFXI update plugins break and it takes hours to recompile all of them. However, we only need to recompile LuaCore and all addons will work again.
- Addons are more stable. Errors in Lua won't usually crash the game, but instead just report an error and abort the current operation. Hence, less frustration for users after updates.
- Addons are all open-source and our Lua API is open as well. Plugins have to be maintained by Windower devs and as the game loses its appeal, so does the Windower team lose its members. Maintaining the entire plugin base is too much for us, and this way the community can help out.
- Windower 5 (which is still being worked on) may not have C++ plugins at all anymore, which is why addons will be easier to port from Windower 4, since they're already in Lua
To this end, we have now decided to remove a few plugins that have had addon alternatives to replace them. A full list of currently removed plugins and currently deprecated plugins as well as plugins that will be deprecated in the near future can be found here:
https://gist.github....912e5c5ed02c58b