On Tuesday, November 10, 2015, Pat David <patda...@gmail.com> wrote: > I was mostly considering the prior use cases for the registry that made it > helpful/handy. I came up with these broad thoughts: > > 1. Allow registered users to post content: > a. Post new scripts/plugins with attachments and versioning if possible > b. Post comments on other items > 2. Allow embeds, attachments, versioning history, and possibly wiki-like > editing on the pages based on user permissions. > 3. Allow easy moderation/administration of topics/comments/users (important > as there are limited people available to police things). > > Honestly, the more I think about it, the more it seems like it might be > better served by something like discourse (you can see the instance I'm > running over at discuss.pixls.us to see what I mean).
First, what is the purpose of having a registry? As a user, I think of the registry as a way to find plug-ins that solve whatever problem I'm trying to solve right now. As a plug-in author, I think of it as a place I can put my plug-ins where users might be able to find them easily, and secondarily as a place to get feedback about them. But the previous registry was set up more like a discussion forum, like it was intended to be a community people that read regularly. If you tried to search for a plug-in, what you got was a bunch of discussions containing your search terms, and *maybe* intermixed with the discussions might be a few entries that were actually plug-ins. I found it so hard to use as a user that I lost motivation to put my own plug-ins there. I've periodically seen discussions in the past about having a registry that GIMP could actually talk to: you could search for plug-ins by keyword within GIMP itself, and even download and install those plug-ins, something beginning users have trouble with. Of course, that's a whole separate discussion (there are rating and malware issues, as well as details like how you build C plug-ins and check API compatibility) and might be better done by a separate program: but it can never even be possible without a place to register plug-ins in a standard way. For that, you'd want a registry that has a few fixed fields: - Plug-in name - Author (and a way to contact the author) - Short description: what does the plug-in do? - Most recent downloadable version, with date and version number - Language it's written in, with a link to a clear page on how to install plug-ins written in this language on various platforms - Long description (feature list, instructions on use) - Image to show what it does (at least one, maybe several) Offering discussions in addition to those fields is nice. (Please, with email notifications! Something a lot of forum sites, and the previous registry, don't seem to do very well.) But the discussions aren't the point: there are already quite a few GIMP discussion forums and mailing lists. Meanwhile, there is no place to register plug-ins in a clear and findable way -- let alone a registry that could some day offer an API and maybe even be integrated into GIMP itself. ...Akkana _______________________________________________ gimp-web-list mailing list gimp-web-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gimp-web-list