Guillermo S. Romero / Familia Romero wrote:
cfreak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (2002-01-11 at 1220.31 -0600):
How about something that could connect to the plugin registry from within Gimp so users could see all plugins availiable, get a description, and install plugins they might want by just clicking a button.
How would you handle compilation, btw? There is no binaries provided, and the compilation is not unified at all (some work with gimptool, others use auto* tools, some do not compile with version x.y, etc). If you can convince everyone to use the same methods, it would be easier.
so from my amateur POV, these steps are necessary:
- create plugin writer HOWTO to promote unified look, feel, compilation, using intl code etc. Preferably with template plugins of different kinds. Hehe, I know it's an evergreen request :)
- define meta information to be provided by plugin author for plugin to be included in registry (gimp version, md5 checksum, ...)
- change the registry site to allow for inclusion of these information
- change the registry so it can return plugin info in some (XML, Scheme) easily parseable format and lets easily download the plugin
- maybe add to PDB the possibility to query the list and details of plugins instead of just procedures defined in them
- create plugin for gimp and/or command-line / windozed utility which is able to contact the registry, download list and details of plugins, present the information of new, updated or incompatible plugins, and let the user to mark them for download and compilation. It could be made to just work with plugins marked as compatible with this method and warn about the others. It could also use users definable commands to download and compile, to shift the setup problem to platform maintainer / user a bit
of course these steps do not have to be necessarily made in succession, but bit by bit we could get there :)
IMO, the registry should also contain SCM/Perl/Python/Whatever scripts, not just plugins in C. Maybe even data - flare setups, brushes, ...
What do you think?
I am sure that somebody has thought of it already or maybe even written it somewhere, so skip over if you have it already clearly envisioned in your mind :)
Jarda Benkovsky
