On 2010-12-14 04:49, Jon Cruz wrote:
On Dec 13, 2010, at 3:20 PM, Yu-Chung Wang wrote:
2010/12/13 Thinker K.F. Li<thinker@...2486...> ... It is not enough to provide a flexible environment. We still need a way to make it possible to insert a widget defined by an extension to a specified position. Firefox does it well (XUL overlay), but it is complex to implement it.
XUL is, in my opinion, exactly the wrong approach for extensions. It really leverages the pixel-tweaking of detailed graphical UI construction, whereas we should be focusing on logical and functional constructs. ...
I agree, making Inkscape "understand" what an extension does makes it possible to a lot of things centrally, and thus consistently. It also makes it a lot easier to evolve the interface and tie things together. (Not to mention that it makes it a lot easier to develop and maintain an extension.)
Also, some mention was made of things like a time-line, and I agree that it might be hard to make Inkscape "understand" that when it has no concept of a time-line. I would like to argue though that perhaps it might be better to first make sure Inkscape DOES have such a concept and then thinking of a UI. Or, alternatively, if you want to go really overboard with UI changes, I could imagine Inkscape separating the UI from rendering and such. In that case you could conceivably build a completely different UI on top of the same core technology.