Re: [gedit-list] Plugins

[Paolo Borelli <pborelli katamail com>]

Jesse van den Kieboom wrote:
> Hello,
>
>
> Some ideas to get some structure in the whole plugins business.
>
>   
Hi Jesse, glad to see this discussion brought up.

> - Define categories for plugins and split gedit-plugins in those
> categories. Also show the categories in the plugins list in gedit (maybe
> with a collapsable treeview). Possible categories are: Desktop,
> Application development, Web development. I think this is important
> because the list of plugins will grow fast.
>
>   
I am not sure categorization is the way we wont to go:
1 - the default set of plugins is manageable, the list grows only when 
people start installing third party plugins. In my opinion chances are 
that someone installing plugins can easily deal with a longer list. 
Beside I think that most of users who install third party plugins only 
installs the plugins they are interested in, so the list should not be 
that big.
2 - categorizing has proven itself not really effective because often 
it is not clear in which category something belongs. It also makes 
finding stuff harder since you first need to guess the category.

> - Merge join/split lines with the advanced editing plugin
> http://live.gnome.org/Gedit/AdvancedEditingPlugin
>
>   
Sounds definately sane.

> - The project plugin, I think there were about three persons working on
> something, but there isn't really anything done as far as I know. I
> think a good project plugin can be very useful for other plugins as well
> because it allows for applying things to all files in the project
> (thinking about cvs/svn plugin or formatting plugin)
>
>   
A project plugin sounds all nice and fine. Interdependent plugins is a 
can of worms I am not really eager to open, so IMHO the longer we resist 
this temptation, the better.

> - Put more structure in the available/requested plugins list. It's a bit
> messy at the moment (in my opinion). Maybe move all plugin related
> information to a separate wiki page (e.g. Gedit/Plugins or
> GeditPlugins).
>
>   
Sure, reorganizing the website&wiki plugins section sounds very good.

> - Write a python plugin howto and create a generic python plugin
> template
>
>   
This has been on the plan for a while... it "just" needs someone doing it :)
It would also make for a nice GnomeJournal article...

> - Design an API for the completion popup as we've talked about before.
> There are quite some plugins that want to have popup lists (snippets,
> word completion, ctags/cscope completion)
>
>   
Anjuta people have implemented this and I also have a plugin by Muntyan 
which implements it. Code seems pretty good. It however needs some 
definite API proposals which takes into account all use cases and future 
expansions. Ideally it belongs to SourceView, but we can first test it 
in GeditView and then migrate it to sourceview when it has proven itself.

> - Decide what to do with the different ctags plugins. I personally don't
> think ctags is really useful for the things we really want, decent code
> completion
>
>   
This is really a matter of someone interested in doing the work. I 
personally don't use CTAGS, but many people do. If someone wants to pick 
this up more power to him.

> - Write a good cvs/svn plugin
>
>   
Ditto, a plugin would be nice. Send it when it's ready ;)


Paolo