Theory,

Thanks for the comprehensive answer, it's very helpful.

Regarding subclassing... one of the items the first sponsor wanted was a specific kind of excerpt highlighter. What I did was open up the Highlighter API to make it more customizable, then wrote the custom subclass for them. The complexity is all within the library; they should be able to maintain the custom subclass themselves. IOW, there wasn't a "right" way to do things before, but there is now. Sounds like the kind of thing you've done with "translating" into a "generally useful" feature.

For cases where a "right" way can't be created... I dunno, I think that might not work so well. KinoSearch isn't as big as Bricolage, but it's still pretty big. Supporting hacked versions could get really complicated if the internals change. I'd lean towards declining the gig.