Editing Lingo (programming language) (section)

==Extensibility==

===XObjects===
Lingo 3.0 was also extensible through External Factories (XFactories) or XObjects (later replaced by [[Adobe Shockwave#Xtras|Lingo Xtras]]), which provided programmatic extensions to Director. For example, controlling external media devices such as CD-ROM and Video tape players through Macintosh SerialPort. XObject API was openly available to developers and media device producers, which added to the popularity and versatility of Lingo. Macromind was very active in positioning the XObject API as standard for external media devices to collaborate through Lingo; and its interest as a standard achieved a lot of involvement from prominent and burgeoning media product companies through an ad hoc group called the Multimedia Association.

===Xtras===
{{Main|Adobe Shockwave#Xtras}}
Starting with Director version 4.0, Lingo was extensible through a new improved class of external plugin called Xtras. Xtras were developed in [[C++]] using the Microsoft [[Component Object Model]] (COM). The standardization with COM helped attract developers to creating a market for such plug-ins.

===Imaging Lingo===
Imaging Lingo was introduced with Director 8.0, and allowed developers to write high-performance image manipulation commands using a simple syntax. There are some similarities to functions of image applications (like [[Photoshop]]), that make it easy to create dynamic, code-based visual effects. Image manipulation was also added into [[ActionScript]] 3.0 with the BitmapData class. As this included more sophisticated commands, Director was also updated to allow conversion between the BitmapData object and its own Image objects.

===3D===
Director 8.5 introduced a [[DirectX]] 3D engine that could be scripted with Lingo. Lingo was updated substantially to support the new 3D objects and now includes a full-featured set of 3D commands. An Xtra was also created to enable use of the [[Havok (software)|Havok]] 3D Physics engine, and later the AGEIA [[PhysX]] engine, in Director 11.