Re: [gedit-list] Gedit Plugins - Unofficial Enhancement Proposal

[Benjamin Gramlich <benjamin gramlich gmail com>]

Zeth and others,

I very much like this idea and would love to see gEdit take some cues
from jEdit. Before migrating to gnome I used jEdit on Mac OS X. It is an
excellent text editor that can become a fully functional IDE through
plugins. I don't know how difficult it would be to create a repository
of plugins that gEdit can access, download, and install. This would be
an ideal method for interfacing with plugins. For plugins to be included
in the repository they would no doubt have to pass security, stability,
and quality checks by the official gEdit maintainers/developers.

Is Zeth's idea one that is even feasible or within the realm of the
gEdit goal and mission?

Blessings,
bg

On Fri, 2007-02-23 at 00:40 +0000, Zeth Green wrote:
> 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
> _______________________________________________
> gedit-list mailing list
> gedit-list gnome org
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gedit-list