Hi,<br><br>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.<br>
<br><br>'Plugin Editor' Embedded QGIS Plugin Development Plugin:<br><br>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.<br>
<br>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.<br>
<br>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.<br>
<br>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.<br>
<br><br>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.<br>
<br><br>[1] <a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4058089/qgis/plugin_editor.png">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4058089/qgis/plugin_editor.png</a><br>[2] <a href="http://www.riverbankcomputing.com/software/qscintilla/intro">http://www.riverbankcomputing.com/software/qscintilla/intro</a><br>
<br><br>Best Regards,<br><br>Larry Shaffer<br>Dakota Cartography<br>Black Hills, South Dakota<br><br>