Plugin registry, docu for plugin devel [was: Re: PATCH: add uml state machine generators]

[Tomas Pospisek <tpo2 sourcepole ch>]

On Sat, 09 Jun 2012 20:22:15 +0200, Hans Breuer <hans breuer org> wrote:
> At 05.06.2012 20:33, Tomas Pospisek wrote:
> > [...]
>  >
> > I'd be very happy if the UML state machine generators could
> > be included in the Dia distribution/repository.
> Thanks for your contribution. I have no problem to include the source
code 
> with the repository or the source tarball as example.
> But I hesitate to include it with the installation. The list of
registered 
> already is too long from the usability point of view. And my current
guess 
> is that very few people will/can use the state machnie generators
without 
> adapting them first to their own needs.

You're right.

The plugin could be put into the examples as you say. but I think that
isn't
optimal either: the code is quite specific - it's mostly useful to see how
you get called by the diagram renderer/exporter and how to write a plugin.
But there's a lot of code specific to generating state machine code, which
is only mildly useful as a generic example I'd say.

For that a simpler example would possibly be more instructive...

However - the reason I had asked for inclusion is, that I feel that _if_
someone needs or would like to generate code from state machine diagrams,
the provided code would be very, very help- and useful.

I'm only finding now after having spent a week digging into Dia and
Python,
that there have been quite a few people attempting to do the same thing -
with various approaches to the problem. However the solutions and code
they've created are very hard to find and dispersed wildly through the
net.

What would be very cool, would be to have something like a "plugin
registry".
It doesn't even need to restrict itself to plugins only but could also
contain helper scripts and programms, that for example process dia files
and produce something new or change them.

The possibility to install plugins could be from within Dia itself
(Tools->Plugins) or by simply visiting a web that has a nice overview of
plugins that are downloadable.

The former would of course be the "deluxe" version, the later could be as
simple as a wiki on dia-installer.de - in case that idea would appeal to
Steffen...

The other thing I think would be very useful for Dia would be some
documentation that would take the interested developer by the hand and
guide him into Dia. The possibility to script dia has tremendous potential
but it is obscured by the lack of clear directions: plugging into Dia
through Python is very simple, getting to that point isn't
straightforward. 

Thanks,
*t