[Geany-devel] Ideas on increasing quality of plugins

[Frank Lanitz]

On Wed, 09 Mar 2011 07:27:06 -0800
Matthew Brush <matthewbrush at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 03/09/11 03:42, Frank Lanitz wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> >
> > Am 23.02.2011 01:10, schrieb Matthew Brush:
> >> Another thing could be to make mandatory that documentation is
> >> existent and current, up to some standard.  I mean for README,
> >> manual, and also doc-comments in code (ex. each function/global
> >> must have a comment or something).  Some other items where
> >> documentation could be enforced; new keybindings, preferences,
> >> menu/toolbar items, tabs.
> > I agree in a general view. According to code comments I'm not sure.
> > But can you give me some more details what did you think about when
> > you referred to the keybindings, preferences etc.?
> 
> Sure!  The perfect example, although I haven't tried it in a little
> bit, is the Debugger plugin.  You load the plugin and see the tab in
> the Message Window, and it looks really cool and useful.  Obviously I
> wanted to try it out right away, so I start to hover over the GUI
> elements hoping for some tooltips to guide me to what to do, but
> nope.  There was nothing in the README (at least when I tried).  So
> then I tried to just figure it out.  Finally after about 10 minutes I
> figure out that "Target" means the binary executable you want to
> debug, which seems kinda obvious now, but at the time the wording
> alone of "target" didn't seem to cut it.
> 
> So after that now I want to run it.  I spent another 10-15 minutes 
> looking through the Toolbar, Build menu, Tools menu, etc looking for 
> where I can invoke the Debugger.  There was nothing in the README.  
> Finally I looked under the Keybindings preferences and saw there was 
> keybindings to run it, and there was no default keybindings selected.
> 
> Point of that story is that *all* I needed was a few hints about what 
> the plugin added to the GUI and what I needed to do to invoke it.  
> Things like the new keybindings, their defaults, etc.  Personally,
> after using some other IDEs, I would have expect a toolbar menu
> button with "step into", "step out of", etc.  So I guess what I mean
> is, if you add a keybinding, or a preference, or a menu item or
> toolbar item, it should be documented.
> 
> I don't mean to pick on the Debugger plugin, I think it's *really*
> cool and I can appreciate that it's still under development, but this
> is specifically what I was thinking of when I wrote that in my
> previous message.

Ah I see. So basicly what you refer to is having a suitable
documentation at all with most important things as well as ensure there
is a basic 'ingame' docu. Did I understand it correct?

Cheers, 
Frank 
-- 
http://frank.uvena.de/en/
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