Plugin Management UI/UX Refactoring

The 5.2 addition of the Addon Manager (interface and features inspired by the website by @Mattkmmr) greatly improved the access and understanding of addons.

However, a separate Addon Manager and Plugin Manager (and the Plugin Manager enhanced addon) creates some confusion.

And the maintenance of a separate Addon List table and categorized buillt-in Plugin lists (only the built-in Gramplets is comprehensive and well organized) in the wiki is tedious and error prone. As is the list on Discourse of curated addon collections and a similar list in the wiki.

Nick has previously suggested consolidating these tools. Lets start a discussion about how the these could be rationalized without losing any of the functionalities. And discuss any shortfalls that could be addressed.

Addon Manager

AddonManager

AddonManager-Settings-tab-default-52

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Plugin Manager

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Plugin Manager enhanced addon

Debug mode

Gramps Addons website (5.1 and 5.0 only)

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The shortfalls are:

  • it is hard to discover where a plug-in feature is accessed in the GUI
    (context-limited plug-ins being particularly challenging. e.g., gramplets and view that are only in specific categories; quick views that are in certain context menus; report and tool groupings)
  • the wiki thumbnails that illustrate a plugin are not part the GUI or the JSON reference file
  • it is hard to limit to a list of Built-in plugins of a particular type
    (The Plugin Manager will include the built-ins but not exlude the addons. this limits access to Help)
  • no single step sharing of a Project definition
    (like you can paste comma delimited data in for Coodinates or the import text gramplet)