I recently updated to 5.2.3 and had to reload all the plugins. Made much simpler with the Addon Manager for sure. Except some addons were missing. In particular was the Isotammi Filter+ addon.
After a lot of looking through the help pages and trials, I was finally successful finding it.
The problem is that these addons are not in one place on github. I have now 3 Isotammi locations to check (added to Projects in the Addon Manager).
Not all of users are that driven to scour the help pages to find these (there might even be more locations).
The idea I would like to float by you is this.
Why does that Addon Manage not have a Projects.ini file that is centrally managed and added to when new addons are created and put in new locations on Github, and then downloaded and updated anytime that the Addon manager is refreshed. Add version control just like addons have. Then us none techy users don’t have to search all over the place for these…
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3? I know there is one external project: Isotammi project. Update: see Curated addon collections
Kari (@kku) has some very useful experimentals in his personal repository. But, his do not have lists that the Addon Manager can leverage. You have to install them manually. When they are finished to his satisfaction, they are published in the Isotammi collection.
Eric Doutreleau (GlopGlop @grocanar ) has some of his published to a list for 3 finished addons… but not the experimental ones.
Jean Michault (JMichault @jmichault ) likewise has a list for 5 addons.
I share your frustration with finding and adding addons. (Which is why there is a thread: “What are your favorite plug-ins which have not been distributed?”) But that is hard to find too.
The other frustration is that it is SO hard to share Project configurations for the Addon Manager, scripts for SuperTool, Custom Filters, Dashboard layouts, and similar items.
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You can eliminate checking the Isotammi clone that Paul Culley was maintaining. He only did that during the beta phase of Gramps 5.2.0 development. It was while Addon Manager was transitioning from a TEXT list of addons to a JSON list. There was too much fiddling with the list format and they were not happy with the incompatibility 5.2 plugin registration was introducing.
The beta cycle needed a test project to make certain the feature worked with multiple projects. So that’s why Paul made the clone with JSON.
But that has all settled out and the Isotammi group now supports the 5.2 JSON list and they even figured out a way around the backward compatibility.
Reviving this topic for 6.1 enhanements discussion
I just had another backchannel discussion with a user where the Addon Manager was not offering any Addons. In that case, it turned out to be that the URL presented in the wiki for the Isotammi project had a couple trailing spaces. And that caused the URL to fail to validate. 6.0 will trim URLs of whitespace and fix half the issue: the validation side, not the lack of error feedback.
There is a burdensome process for what to do when there are no addons listed. It seems like some of this could be done on Gramps side:
- In the Projects tab:
- if no Project checkbox (with a validated URL) is selected in the Projects tab, make the “Addons” and “Settings” tabs unavailable
- when a Project checkbox is being selected, validate that the
addons-en.JSON fallback can be reached and add an indicator to the Project title. (Add a 2nd indicator if a Native Language JSON can be reached.)
- Hide the URL in the Projects tab listings. Users don’t need to see this. Maybe it could be a debug display option?
- Display a Comment line about the Project.
- ask for permission to access the net (with a “remember” checkbox), add to the “Warnings and Error dialogs” list in the warnings tab of Preferences. (Once created, this “Opt In” dialog should be extended to any URL-following feature.)
- In the Edit Project dialog:
- make the dialog wide enough so show the entire default Gramps project URL or make the URL text field into a wrapping multiline text field.
- Add a clipboard copy/paste feature that uses the full Gramps.ini [behavior] addons-projects definition for a Project. (A copy would allow simple sharing of the Project via Discourse or other forums. Pasting a clipboarded Project definition would fill out the form in the Edit Project) This would probably need to include a header to identify the version of Gramps.ini for future-proofing. (the Gramps.ini itself could probably benefit from versioning info. it currently just says
;; Gramps key file)
- Add a “Comment” field
- In the Settings tab:
- Make Gramps startup respect the default
Never choice in the “Check for addon updates”. (Currently, failing to connect to the Projects URLs causes a cascade of error messages piped to the Console. It should not even try these if “Never” is selected.)
- Display a total count of addons discovered during a Check for updated addons now action in the “There are no available addons of this type” dialog and the “Available Gramps Updates for Addons” dialog.
- in the Addons tab:
- to the right of the Search field and Magnifying Glass button, add a
<found>/<total count> plugins count readout like those of Views. (The total being the collated count of entries in the currently selected Projects addons-en.json.)
- make the filtered lozenges have a different color in the CSS (Since the Everyone and Stable filters are not at the “All” setting, those lozenges might be Orange instead of Blue.)
- clicking on a Blue lozenge changes the filter to that particular value
- clicking on an Orange lozenges changes the filter to the “All”
Or maybe the dialog could be changed to a Plugins view category … although more strictly appropriate as a dashboard, it would be a bit too cramped without offloading features to the sidebar/bottombar.
A view would give plugins a familiar interface instead of being unique. But it seems a shame to use up the category Navigator sidebar space for something used so infrequently.
The filtering could be changed to a sidebar Filter Gramplet. The Settings and Projects tabs could become view Configure... options. The “Check Addons” could be a toolbar button. The “Install/Update”, “Uninstall” “Private” could be toolbar buttons or Context Menu items. (Private could be Hide{disable}/Reveal{enable}.) The Last Changed could be the install/update date.
The Info from the Plugin Manager enhanced make a good a bottombar Gramplet.
And a plugins-__.json could be generated for the Core/built-in plugins to allow them to be a “Project” where the Version and Installed Version will always be equal. So no Update/Install will ever be offered. But (most) of the rest of the view’s features would be applicable.