John, Art,
I think it will ultimately depend upon whether there ARE many multiple identical DLL's in use at any given time.
If not, then separate naming will be fine.
However, I still think asking a user to DO this naming is asking for trouble over the long haul of mach3 life.
Please consider what happens as the DLL concept matures... When there are thousands to choose from.
More importantly, consider what happens as Mach becomes wider used by less "involved" operators.
I'd just like to see the potential disarray of ten thousand different named Dll's(993 of which are not being used, but still floating around the directory structure of my customer's computer) considered up front. Software design says always to consider borderline cases. the zero and infinite. please Consider "overflow".
(BTW, in this hypothetical example that user added them cuz he read that doing so would help him do something wonderful. Now I'm trying to help him get rid of the ones he didn't need, and dealing with the fact that he added some typo's when he re-named them... and perhaps those typo's now have two different and separate dll's named identically.)
"Send me your list of DLL's" is not gonna cut it...
So perhaps my quest is more towards dealing with getting dll's into and OUT of a given user's directory structure.
(similarly: I dislike not knowing whether I can delete a given bitmap or not, since I can't remember which screen it goes with...)
Whatever you do, please give us a good means to MANAGE these DLL's in relation to multiple profiles. With unsophisticated users. Or sophisticated ones who've made misteaks...
Ballendo