[Geany-Devel] Plugin manager interface

[Colomban Wendling]

Le 23/04/2014 20:58, Pavel Roschin a écrit :
> Hello!
> 
> There are some inconveniences in current plugin manager window:
> - plugin description is too long and is hard to read because of window width

Indeed.  It used to be presented otherwise, not sure why it ended up
like this, but it's clearly not optimal.

> - too many actions user need to perform to get access to plugin settings

Is that so?  this means *one* more click.

> - no plugin search feature

That don't seem required to be, but could indeed be handy with the
growing number of plugins.  Should be fairly easy to add, minus good
matching.

> - too many windows: settings - window, keybindings - window, help - window

Settings window, keybindings with all others, help is most of the time
opening externally (either website or local HTML help file).

> I tried to make some sort of concept of plugin manager interface design. Maybe
> you will find it interesting:
> http://pbrd.co/1jBUM4f
> 
> Alternative (move description to bottom):
> http://pbrd.co/1jBUOJh

Both look terribly ugly and not particularly practical to me.  I'd
rather see something simple and clean like everyone else do it (look at
e.g. GEdit or GeanyPy).

> I offer:
> - add search field

OK

> - remove unnecessary labels

OK, filename is not terribly useful to most people, could be moved in a
tooltip or something.

> - remove plugin description from list

Again, I'd rather put it in, just better presented

> - show plugin description as tooltip or show it in status bar

Too important to be hidden I think

> - show plugin settings immediately

Why?  Most plugins just works, and it's definitely not the first thing
you need to touch.  Also, clicking *one* button don't seem so hard to me.

> - show plugin keybindings as tab where user can check keybindings _only_ for
>   this plugin

Could be a little better maybe, although with the new in-dialog button
it doesn't seem so bad already.

> - show help as a tab (of course there should be API for help window with rich
>   text, maybe show readme)

Again, I don't particularly like the "all embedded, fat dialog" design,
and again, most of the plugins simply want to display a web page.  And
no, we won't depend on a web rendering engine for this, sorry.

> Any suggestions?

Do something simple, not Eclipse.


Colomban


PS: sorry for perhaps sounding harsh, but I had to answer quickly now
Lex almost made you lose some of your time implementing before talking :)