While I’m digging into updating and improving the Dutch translation, I’m faced with different terms for extensions to the Gramps system: plugin,
extension, gramplet.
Is there a substantial difference between these three types (?) of extensions?
And - the light of translation and ease of use - do we need these different extension types to be exposed to the user and couldn’t we do with just one denominator, eg gramplet? (I quite like the word)
In Dutch there is no translation for plugin, so for the time being I’ve opted for the same translation as for extension and kept gramplets as is.
“Extension” and “plugin” are the same in concept. Except that Extension is a term that is commonly used in other software… typically in technical documentation. Widget is also the same… a term commonly seen outside, in other products… typically in marketing documentation.
A “plugin” is the term that the Gramps team chose (over the more grammatically correct “plug-in”) – it is more unique for searching and stays that way because the term is not transformed by translation automation. (Likewise “addon” instead of “add-on”, “addin”, or “add-in” for aftermarket plugins. But oddly, they use “built-in” instead of “builtin” for core plugins.)
We are not consistent because there is no marketing department with a whip… driving contributors to be consistent. So some contributors prefer to be grammatically correct and to be transformable with translation automation.
However, a “Gramplet” is a specific type (or sub-category) of plugin. It is not interchangeable with plugin. Here is a (growing*) list of the types of plugin.
*“Database” type plugins were added for the 5.0 release. “Citation” plugins are being added for the 5.2 version.