Hi Neil! :-)

 NH> What I 
 NH> envision is some way for a module to be able to tell a controller:

 NH>      1.  that it exists.
 NH>      2.  what it does.  This would be a string supplied by the
 NH>          module itself (such as: "What is the meaning of life").
 NH>      3.  what function would have to be called in order for the
 NH>          module to spring to life.

 NH> Does anybody have an idea how I could implement such a beast?
Sounds like CORBA with that controller of yours being the object broker.
Probably overkill, though.

Basically you need a daemon of some sort running. It needs to provide just
two functions: one that modules can call with the information you listed
above and another that interested parties can call to get a list of known
modules, their description, and the function to call.

That leaves the question on how to locate and call the module once it's
name is known. Depends on what the modules really are, they could be
standalone programs or loadable library modules or ... ;)

Ciao
Pascal

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