A plan for the future is to create a FilterFactory, to make the process of making a new filter a simple process of specifying a few details, and writing a small amount of code to perform the actual data processing. Ideally, a FilterFactory would perform the tasks of boilerplate creation, code functionality implementation, and filter registration. Unfortunately, this has not yet been implemented. Even when someone eventually does write a FilterFactory, this element will not be able to cover all the possibilities available for filter writing. Thus, some plugins will always need to be manually coded and registered. Here is a rough outline of what is planned: You run the FilterFactory and give the factory a list of appropriate function pointers and data structures to define a filter. With a reasonable measure of preprocessor magic, you just need to provide a name for the filter and definitions of the functions and data structures desired. Then you call a macro from within plugin_init() that registers the new filter. All the fluff that goes into the definition of a filter is thus be hidden from view.