[Qgis-developer] Re: ideas for developpers)

Borys Jurgiel borys at wolf.most.org.pl
Tue May 27 07:26:42 EDT 2008


Tim Sutton:
> Hi Borys
> Are you running trunk? I recently added filtering option to make it
> easier to find stuff in the plugin manager. I have some more changes
> planned, so before you do too much work, it may be good to collaborate
> a bit. I would like to add a 'category' combo above the plugins list,
> and was thinking to make an update to the plugin interface to allow
> this. I think I can do this without impacting existing C++ plugins (by
> putting a default category of 'undefined' into the plugin abstract
> base class. However I'm unsure of the impacts this will have on the
> pythonistas out there.

Yes, your work is really usefull, especially when I know the plugin which I 
want to enable/disable. But sometimes I want to have many plugins enabled, so 
keeping order in menus and toolboxes is important too ;) So I hope you mean 
the categorisation will take effect not only inside the manager, but also in 
the menu/toolbox structure. On example, existing plugins for selection can 
join the new Barry's "Select" menu. 

I was writing about makeshift free moving the plugin items inside the menus 
and toolboxes, but now it's not so important, since Carson has promised to 
put all his plugins in order :DD

Categorisation is not hard to implement technically, but it's much harder to 
elaborate good (clear and sufficient) categories :) I think we need the 
vision of future QGIS tools structure and fit all the plugins into it, but 
even ArcGIS doesn't bring me many good ideas. Maybe it's time for huge 
brainstorm. Then the category mechanism will be even unnecessary, if plugin 
developers swear to keep the rules ;)


Sebastien Vial wrote:
> - database oriented plugins
> - raster oriented
> - import/export
> - selecting
> - statistics...

These ideas are good for a start.

> * and about the plugin manager : adding a column to know the installed
> version of the plugin (like some linux package manager), in order to
> compare the version number, and to know if the plugin needs to be
> re-installed --- and perhaps a warning when there is a new version of a
> plugin

I don't know C++ yet, so now I can improve Plugin Installer and add the 
features:
 - the version column as you said
 - the column with status indicator: upgradable/new in repository
 - checking for updates and for news in repositories on demand and also
   when QGIS is starting.

Someday this code might be attached to the Plugin Manager (when I learn C++!), 
but before 0.11 release I can implement this only in the Plugin installer.
So what do you think about it? And what about removing the Plugin Installer 
item from the Plugins menu and launching it directly from the Manager? 
Tim, can you implement this and do you think it's suitable?

And one question. There are two branches in the QSettings:
      Plugins/$PLUGIN_NAME        = bool
      PythonPlugins/$PLUGIN_DIR   = bool

What they mean? They don't correspond with actually enabled plugins at mine!

Regards,
B.


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