[gedit-list] Gedit Plugins - Unofficial Enhancement Proposal

["Zeth Green" <theology gmail com>]

Hello Everyone,

This is an unofficial enhancement proposal, I am not a Gedit
developer, I am just a keen user who has started to write plugins.
Please do discuss this and add your improvements. These changes will
require some very minor code changes to gedit, but I hope you will
agree that it would be well worth it.

Rationale
=========

Extensions are the killer feature of Firefox. Indeed the vibrant
extension community is one of the major reasons why people use Firefox
over the otherwise more beautiful Epiphany. Indeed, some GNOME-based
distributions (such as Ubuntu) do not even come with Epiphany any
more.

Gedit plugins do not have the same buzz as Firefox extensions. Of
course, Firefox is a very big project. However, there is more to it
than that, after all, almost every GNOME user gets Gedit.

The truth is that very few Gedit users install plugins, for two
reasons. Firstly, there are not that many plugins, there is not a
vibrant scene yet. Secondly, and most fundamentally, it is just too
complicated to install plugins.

The plugin architecture of Gedit is very nice for people like me who
want to write Gedit plugins, however it is frankly horrific for the
end-user to install them, especially if they are new to Linux. If one
has to use the command-line to install a plugin, then the user might
as well use Emacs.

In this document, I will outline how I feel that Gedit's approach to
plugins can be improved, to make the plugins far more user friendly
and inclusive, as well as encouraging the plugin scene to be far more
vibrant.


Proposals in brief:
===================

1. Single and Simplified plugin format.

2. Single plugin location.

3. New Button - "Install New Plugin".

4. New context menu item - "Delete Plugin".

5. No bundled plugins.


Proposals:
=========

1. Single Plugin Format

All plugins have a .gedit-plugin file. However, beyond that, at the
moment, plugins can be organised in two ways. They can be a single
file, or they can be a directory. This inconsistency will make it very
complicated for graphical plugin installation and especially
uninstallation.

I propose a single format. All plugins will basically follow the
directory approach, but the gedit-plugin file will be inside the
directory.

Each plugin must be provided for download as a gzipped directory, e.g.
plugin.tar.gz. The archive contains the directory, which then contains
all the files.

This will make graphical installation and uninstallation very simple.
It will also have benefits for command-line users, each installed
plugin is a directory. To delete the plugin, just delete the
directory.

This will require no code changes to existing plugins, they will just
need to be re-archived. I could repackage all existing plugins in an
hour.

2. Single Plugin Location

It is too confusing for the user to have more than one plugin
location. I am proposing that there will now only be one place to
install plugins. I.e. ~/.gnome2/gedit/plugins

3. New Button - "Install New Plugin".

The current plugin manager is quite user friendly but is missing the
ability to add plugins. You can activate and deactivate, but you
cannot install or uninstall plugins.

So we need a new button - "Install New Plugin". Clicking this button
would then open the file browser, expecting a .tar.gz.

The user then browses to where they have downloaded a new plugin. When
the file is selected and the user presses OK, the selected file will
be ungzipped, and the directory inside will be copied into the plugin
directory.

At this point the plugin can be activated and deactivated using the
checkbox in the normal way.

4. New context menu item - "Delete Plugin".

Currently, when you right click on a plugin in the manager, you
receive a context menu. I am proposing a new menu item called "Delete
Plugin". This will delete the directory of that plugin.

5. No bundled plugins.

Firefox does not come with a large number of pre-installed plugins.
Even though most Firefox plugins are very small files. Why? Because
they do not want to crowd out the extensions scene with 'official
extensions'. Instead, what was once core functionality in the old
Mozilla, now shares the same website with every other plugin.

I am proposing that all the currently bundled plugins, and those of
the extra plugins pack, be incorporated into a new plugins website.
The fact that end users are coming to the site to get these plugins,
would encourage them to try out others, as well as allow them to learn
how to install plugins. I think this proposal would do the most to
encourage the development of new plugins, and help expand the plugin
community to a sustainable size.

Thankyou for reading. Please let me know what you think.

Best Wishes,
Zeth