[Qgis-developer] organizing plugins

[Jean-Denis Giguere]

Greetings,

During the last year, I gave twice a 60 hours introductory course in
GIS where Quantum GIS was the primary Desktop user interface used.

I agree with Micha that minimal interface at the first start up is a
very, very important quality of QGis UI. It allows progressive
integration of functionalities. I believe it is easier to add
functionalities over a strong foundation then trying to hide
unnecessary tools for a specific use case.

If plugins organization is effective, there is not very much pain to
add plugins and navigate through them. A lot of plugins provide very
interesting features and it is important to make them easily
available. I'm not sure that putting many of them in the default menus
will deserve this very well. Power users can add plugins, newbies are
afraid by complex menus.

Maybe cloud tags as suggested by Barry could be interesting. Multiple
keywords seems to be a must as it is the base to allow multiple views
of the plugins organization.

I don't want to go to far away from the original topic, but I believe
that documentation must be a major concern for good availability and
usability of plugins. If we can find easily which plugins are
available, what are their detailed functionalities, how to use them
and how to find them, we make important points. Once it is done (or in
parallel), interaction design may be use to improve usability and
accessibility of plugins.

It's just my 2¢. Thank you for your really good work!


Jean-Denis