how do you get your 'software' to recognize a new alt-coin
My idea was manually by server operator. He can automate some parts of it but some work would be probably required. Idea is that one man and few scripts can do work for the rest of pool users...
About that "switch from sha256 to scrypt"... How about this: "pool" can consists of 2 pools - one for sha256 and one for scrypt. Miners will mine at both of them, but based on current coin one will be always down...
Or any other working solution... definitively feasible...
Nah, the pool should have two servers. One that is always doing sha256 and one that is always doing scrypt. So you choose which by what port-number you connect to. You can then either set your mining software to mine at one of them or to switch every now and then.