[Qgis-developer] New Embedded Plugin Editor Plugin - Input Welcome

[Larry Shaffer]

Hi,

So over the past week I've put together a new plugin for QGIS, for which I
would like input from anyone with an opinion about its functionality[1].
When I started writing plugins, I found the documentation OK, but a bit
dispersed, and the learning curve a touch steep and bit tricky. This has
gotten much better, with Alessandro Pasotti's new plugin repository app and
the work on moving documentation solely to the PyQGIS Cookbook. To further
help potential plugin developers, I decided to make a plugin to help
develop plugins, essentially what I wish I had available when I started
down the path of having fun with PyQt and QGIS.


'Plugin Editor' Embedded QGIS Plugin Development Plugin:

The main focus of the plugin is not to replace a true IDE. Real development
editors are great coding gurus, but can be a bit daunting to learn while
also trying to be a productive at writing your first QGIS plugin. Plugin
Editor is intended specifically to fill the needs of new plugin developers,
some (more than some?) of whom might have no understanding of even the
Python language.

The interface focus is on 'learning by example.' With features like
generating a new plugin from a template (only one now), to duplicating an
existing plugin to play with, having basic features enough to write the
entire plugin from scratch, to lending a helping hand with packaging and
distribution of the final work -- all from within QGIS -- the Editor
strives to be a central point of learning plugin development. All current
documentation and PyQGIS plugin development resources should be accessible
via the interface. Other features may help seasoned plugin creators with
common tasks, like incidental editing, browsing other's work, and plugin
distribution and updates.

However, I'm still a bit new to plugin development myself; so, I would
really like any input from other developers on what they would like to see
(or not) in this plugin before I do the first feature freeze. Feel free to
voice your opinion, but please be gentle to my oh-so-delicate ego. I have
many other features in the works, but am trying to keep the focus on
simplicity and clean functionality, inline with other QGIS development and
the understanding that the plugin is mostly for beginners.

I don't have a github repo set up yet as the plugin is still alpha; plus, I
would only embarrass myself if I released the code under its current state.
I have the basic embedded editor (newly released Eric4 4.5.0 'Mini' Editor
- GPL license) functioning and about a third of the other features done
(see annotated screen snap from Mac OS X [1]). Plugin works great in
Ubuntu, too -- actually, better. Not tested on Windows yet.


This plugin brings up another development consideration I would like to
hear some opinions on. I have incorporated the QScintilla2 [2] PyQt widget
into the QGIS app stack to accomplish this plugin. On Ubuntu, this was as
simple as apt-get of libqscintilla2 and python-qscintilla2. On the Mac,
it's another story. It requires adjustment of the CMake build steps and
bundling of the PyQt Qsci.so and libqscintilla2.8.dylib into the resultant
.app, like other PyQt resources. Not sure what to do on Windows, yet. My
opinion is that releasing QGIS with the pre-built addition of Qsci.so (~1
MB compressed, GPL license) for use by future plugin developers, to add
embedded text editors, would be very beneficial.


[1] http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4058089/qgis/plugin_editor.png
[2] http://www.riverbankcomputing.com/software/qscintilla/intro


Best Regards,

Larry Shaffer
Dakota Cartography
Black Hills, South Dakota
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