Plugins (was Re: F-Spot mission statement)

[Sam Barker <sam quadrocket co uk>]

On Mon, 2006-08-28 at 18:01 +0200, Marcus Hast wrote:
> On 8/28/06, Ben Monnahan <monnahan gmail com> wrote:
> > While this may have been true 1-2 years ago, now I'm not so sure.  My wife
> ...
> > make it to them the better IMHO.  (Please understand I'm not asking for a
> > completely dumbed down F-Spot either, non-technical people are intelligent,
> > but we can't overload them.  Its all about making it intuitive)
> 
> Well, it may be dependent on regions and whom you know. My personal
> experience (in Sweden) is that I don't know anyone whom I'd consider a
> "casual" user that uses Linux in any form. (Hopefully that will change
> though.)
I think things are getting a little confused here. I consider my self an
expert user of computer, but I am very much a casual user of my camera.
Certain features may be interesting relevant to certain users. For
instance; I didn't realise that camera would take photos as anything
other than jpeg until reading this list. 

> Also I agree with you that making a "intuitive" program is good. And
> that's enjoyed by "casual" and "expert" users alike.
> 
> > As I said in my other email, I don't think we need to limit ourselves to
> > only serving the "casual" users.  But I'd like to see us commit to usability
> > for these users first, and then add in other features for expert users where
> > possible.  Plugins can hopefully big a help here, not just for
> > maintainability of the code, but allowing users to pick and choose what they
> > need.  Your expert features I'm sure aren't the same as mine.
> 
> Again it becomes a discussion about what features are for casual users
> and what is for expert users. Eg I'd say that versioning is for expert
> users. Consider that no other photo management program (that I know
> of) has this feature. However I'd also say that it's one of the most
> essential features in F-Spot. (It was pretty much *the* feature which
> made me use it.) And if you demonstrate it for casual users they are
> likely to find it just as invaluable as an expert user.
> 
> One potential drawback with plugins that I see is that you can end up
> with a program which has a lot of good plugins which work well with
> the basic system but which behave strange with each other.

The banshee approach to plugins seems to be a good one in this
situation. Offer a core set of supported plugins which are tested with
the main build etc but are actually separate bits of code. There is
nothing to stop other people supplying their own plugins if they wish
but those should be expected to work with the core set. 

This is as opposed to the firefox free for all. 

Any plugin system implemented needs to have some way to prevent or at
least acknowledge conflicting tasks. Such as someone implementing loss
less rotation on export and another plugin offering lossy rotation. 

Designing a good intuitive UI is a very difficult and black magic task,
as one persons intuition is another persons voodoo magic. 

Sam