[Geany-devel] Moving XML/HTML specific stuff into plugin

[Enrico Tröger]

On Sat, 16 Jan 2010 20:52:04 +0100, Frank wrote:

>Hi 
>
>During my work on moving some LaTeX specific functions from Geany core
>to geanyLaTeX plugin I recognized some code which is pretty much
>HTML/XML specific and might would make sense to move also into a
>plugin. On first step I was thinking about moving auto_table() out of
>editor.c, but there are a couple of more things like the automatic
>closing of XML tags which might would make sense to move into a
>separate plugin. 
>
>Lets give you a short list of advantages/disadvantages I can imagine
>off doing such a step: 
>
>Advantages:
>+ Geany's core is keeping small and as we don't need to care about too
>much filetype specific stuff
>+ Save some CPU cycles on every change on editor widget for users which
>don't use XML/HTML as the check for this types will not be needed
>anymore
>+ More flexibility in upgrading the fileype specific functions when
>realized as a plugin 
>* Possible more configuration possibilities for user without bloating
>Geany's preferences dialogues itself for non-XML/HTML users 
>
>Disadvantages
>- With a new plugin the user needs to know about and needs to activate
>it
>- User might think Geany is not support HTML properly as he wasn't
>aware of n-1 
>- Additional overhead on 
>	* coding
>	* running the plugin through plugin API
>
>Please let me know what you think about. 

I'm not sure whether we should do this.
Basically you are completely right about moving filetype specific code
from the core into a plugin. But we also have little specifics for
other filetypes, e.g. auto indenting in Python after typing a colon.
These little things don't match the requirement to be moved into a
plugin, IMO. Though in case of the HTML/XML features, there is a lot
more stuff which we do so we are talking about a good bunch of code not
only a few lines.
Still I think it could become a bit cumbersome for users to enable a
specific plugin to have the functionality they were used to have in
Geany for ages. 
And then there is the fact the code in question in used for HTML *and*
XML which are two separate filetypes. How should a user expect that he
have to enable a HTML plugin to get tag auto closing in XML files?

After all, I rather think we should keep it in the core even though
it's mainly for the better user experience.

Just my 2.5 cents.


Regards,
Enrico

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