On Sat, 2004-12-18 at 23:50 -0800, Bryce Harrington wrote:
On Sat, 18 Dec 2004, Ted Gould wrote:
-- Extensions dialog -- I think that this is a really good idea. I'd like to be able to load and unload the extensions from a dialog -- for testing also. If someone could mock up the dialog and take care of all "the GUI stuff" I'd be happy to help with the tying it into the rest of the system part of it. Otherwise, this has lower priority for me to getting effects working happily. One thing that I'd like to see in this dialog is a place to put a textual "Why this extension didn't load" so we can explain missing dependencies to users somewhere.
What sorts of widgets do you think it should have?
Hmm, not entirely sure. I guess when I think about this dialog I always think of something kinda like the XML editor... but I'm not really sure about what it 'should' be.
Here's what I'm thinking:
- This will probably be an "Advanced user" dialog -- I don't think anyone should have to use this as part of their daily routine, only when debugging a problem.
- I see the most common use as finding out why a dependency failed. The second would be to force an extension to unload.
- I would like to be able to display all the information about a given extension. From it's name and ID, to which implementation it is using and what it's current active state is.
- I'm undecided on how people would want to search for an extension. I'm thinking by functionality (Input/Output/Print/Effect/etc) and then by name? Just by name all the way through?
So, if we had an XML editor type interface, here is kinda what I'd think for the left pane:
Loaded Disabled ** Input * AI Input X * GIMP Gradient X * SVG Input X * SVGZ Input ** Output * PS Output X * SVG Output X * SVGZ Output X
Where the 'X' are active check boxes that can load/unload an extension. And, perhaps, if you uncheck the disabled flag it would rerun dependencies to see if things have gotten better (perhaps you installed ghostscript).
When the extension in the left-hand pane is selected, the right hand pane would show all the information on the extension.
I don't know thought -- if someone has other ideas I'm definitely open to them. That is just a brain dump of what I was thinking.
--Ted